#disclaimer that i am Not a californian

[transgenderboobs]

rewriting this fic is fun because after writing stuffy repressed british men for the last like 4 years of my life it's nice to be able to write something i can relate to again: depressed 20-something faggots from california 👍

[bcacstuff]

Anon that wrote to me, quoting several parts of a post about MPC on another blog and asking my view on it.

Sorry to keep you waiting as you wrote to me last week already. I actually wrote the majority of this (very long) post already last Friday in answer to what you sent me but given the events this weekend and I wanted to check and tweak the post still a little before publishing, I held of until now.

I chose to not post all the quotes and the link you gave me. I don't read that blog, but I took a look at the post and I can conclude that for someone bragging about her legal background (a lot) and values the legal facts, it's quite odd how she makes a number of assumptions and guesses of which most if not all, are incorrect. So I will note and correct them below. Sit tight and pour yourself a cup of coffee, or rather keep the pot at hand, as this will be a lengthy and detailed answer to your question(s).

Before I do however; A disclaimer: This post is in no way intended to criticize MPC, the organization nor the people involved. I merely try to answer my Anon with the facts that can be searched out and are, or have been, in the public domain. I do acknowledge the positive effects people have encountered from the program and surely appreciate a good deal MPC has done for charity and the health of their members. Putting here and there some side notes to it, doesn't make my appreciation less. They're merely side notes, while most of this post is about putting things in a historical context and perspective in the most correct way possible.

First of all, may I remind you of a post I posted 2 years ago. You can scroll along the hateful Anons I answered (actually triggered me to write that post) and read where I based my personal skeptical view on both businesses, MPC and GCC upon. It also shows how much of this post was already researched by me years ago.

In that post you can already see how intertwined both companies are. MPC and GCC both share the same officers as you can see from the screenshots on that post. The certain blogger only posted the initial registration of MPC in Delaware, but the corporation branched out first to California and consequently to Nevada. Nevada being the last and active branch, where the Californian branch is inactive. The initial filing will (must) always stay active as the original filed home company, being branched out means, and I quote from the opencorporates website:

A branch company is an out-of-jurisdiction registration of a company (in the US it is often referred to as a 'Foreign Corporation')

This in simple words means, My Peak Challenge LLC Nevada is a branch of the Delaware registration currently falling under jurisdiction of Nevada (the active branch). The screenshot this blogger shows is therefore outdated, blogger notes there's only one officer listed but not named and tells her Anon, and I quote:

pay away from your wallet to find out it's very probably SRH: I am not doing it for you.

Too bad she didn't pay away herself, or didn't look any further. As said, the company snapshot is outdated, Nevada is the current branch as you can see in this snapshot, see the Annual list (25 January 2024).

It also shows not ONE but TWO officers available. And I can tell you for sure without the need to log in or pay a fee that none of them is Sam R. Heughan, like this blogger claims. A 'very probably' assumption doesn't make a fact.

The Opencorporate Database made some changes to the website requiring to log in to access some data. Though this wasn't the case when I took a snapshot 2 years ago, clearly showing that not SRH is one of the officers of My Peak Challenge

Note: Exactly the same ones that are the officers for GGC!

(side note: AN being a managing member and Jennifer Zischke being the agent assisting taxpayers and small businesses with taxes in Boulder City NV and the surrounding communities)

If you do a search on Linkedin (I heard this blogger likes to analyse people this way) you can also find out that some employees are employed by MPC as well as GGC over the years

So I can understand the sentiment the Anon showed, and I quote:

Your statement of knowing what he's doing with his MPC, is questionable, post corporate change of MPC. It's not just his alone. MPC has sketchy history, since Alex's involvement, and the rumors, look more as truths that a good portion of the administrative costs go to Alex pre-whisky, for a working, guaranteed salary before sales came in.

As shown the businesses are visibly intertwined and there is no transparency as I noted in my initial post 2 years ago. As an LLC they have no obligation to open up finances, though not proven it sadly gives room for rumors and skepticism.

Blogger also fails to research the true history about My Peak Challenge, which Anon refers to as the post corporate change of MPC. Blogger states (quote):

Like it or not, Norouzi's involvement in MPC is a reality since at least its creation.

Like it or not, this is pertinent incorrect, and can be proven as incorrect statement.

The history or My Peak Challenge

The first mention of My Peak Challenge dates from at least before 31 December 2014, as a collaboration between the Welsh brothers Andy and Gareth Shears of Bear Strength, clothing company, and Outlander actor Sam Heughan. This tweet shows already in September 2014 the partnership between them

On 27 December 2014 this video is posted on YouTube

On 1st January 2015 an article in the Daily record is posted:

More Youtube videos were posted on 18 and 27 January 2015 by Everyday Athlete Gym, also mentioning My Peak Challenge

This clearly has been the first initiative for the My Peak Challenge project and program and there is no mentioning of AN, even more Sam didn't know AN by then. (as I will show later on her met AN only end 2015)

Also note the transparency here how much of the welcome pack will be donated. A clear figure we can rely on.

The initiative being repeated the next year in the same way and the same partners involved. You can find several articles online about it

In this article from 2 March 2016 we can read:

Note that the website is British (co.uk) and not an org or a US based one.

There's also a first flag for MPC - via Bear Strength and MPC on Twitter and FB, the public group page.

And there is a video posted on 28 January 2016 on FB

Note how still the same partners (Fight Camp and Bear Strength) are mentioned.

But here we can see a first involvement of AN, if you take a scroll on AN's IG, you will find this post from 14 February 2016

Involved in the production and directing the video. The picture shows them on the same couche the video was recorded for MPC 2016.

As we know Sam met AN through an interview and photoshoot for the magazine The Box, published in the January/February issue.

Some now very familiar names are listed in the colofon of the magazine

Also see the left bottom corner, the photographer we know now

All people Sam didn't knew before then, and all related to AN!

But not involved (yet) in the 2016 MPC program as you can see in this snapshot where he tells about MPC and it is even clearly shown how it started in 2014. Sam is wearing the Bear Strength T-shirt as well

So this is where it all began and AN learned about MPC from Sam.

So then it all changed for 2017 as we read on this blog from obsessivesassenach

Yes, this is where AN took over and the first registration of My Peak Challenge as a corporation was filed in Delaware on March 20, 2017

And from here we don't see any mention of Bear Strength anymore, as you can read above 'they changed shirt company to a US based one'. Fight Camp isn't mentioned anymore as well, though John Valbo stays on as a coach as we all know.

SRH was not an officer of this corporation, never was, this has been AN from the start of filing the corporation as a 'Managing Member'. (It's also possible to do a search on OpenCorporation Database on officers, here you can find Alexander Norouzi as officer of MPC, GGC and Latha Ur). Even more Sam has stated multiple times he doesn't get paid for MPC, it's even noted in the FAQ on their website. So the one making comments about how Sam can be free to invest his MPC earnings in his whisky business doesn't have a clue what she's talking about, not to mention other uneducated assumptions and comments.

On the same FAQ we can read:

How much of the membership fee is donated to charity? Fifty percent of net membership fees (after payment processing, membership gift, fulfillment and admin fees) is donated directly to our charity partners.

Note the 'net' membership fees. Yes, 50% and not 59% as Anon wrote, but it is easy to figure that this is just a typo by the Anon as the 9 and the 0 are next to each other on the keyboard. (e.g needlessly a bit very insulting to call Anon out for an 'uneducated bigot' and 'like a demented Asian astrologist suggestion') if I dare say so.

Quoting more of the Anon on this bloggers post:

it's on Sam, who according to original members, basically sold MPC control, in 2017.

Though the wording of the Anon can not legally hold, the sentiment however is very plausible. One can argue and make guesses why Bear Strength all of the sudden was out of the loop. Especially as it was a successful program and it's not really likely a company like Bear Strength would bow out that easily and totally voluntarily. This tweet clearly looks like Bear Strength surely would have liked to be involved for another year

It leaves enough room for the sort of sentiment (not a fact, but a sentiment) the Anon makes. As curiously Bear Strength completely disappears from the stage as soon as AN gets involved and MPC turns into an LLC registered in the US with just AN's name on it.

From here on we know the history, MPC turned from a project into a business based in the US with gradually more paid employees (of which a number are employed by GGC as well), donating to charity partners they choose each year.

It's also notable how MPC since then has employees, before in this post I showed Joshua C. linkedin profile shows being involved since 2018, Jordana B. has been involved from the start of the US LLC and Cheryl A (AN's (ex)wife) since 2021. On FB we see the magazine's last post dates from November 2019.

Last but not least, to put things just a bit more in 'context', another interesting quote from the obsessivesassenach blog is

My Peak Challenge and MPC were officially registered trademarks. No one, not even Peakers, could use those two terms in any public way. Not even for fundraising or naming their little private facebook groups. If a Peaker wanted to raise money for Bloodwise, UK, great, awesome, wonderful, but don’t use the branded and registered and trademarked MPC/My Peak Challenge in your pursuits. It belongs to the business.

Not entirely true, but yes, from there on My Peak Challenge and MPC were officially registered trademarks. But not owned by the business! The trademarks 'My Peak Challenge', MPC', and 'PEAKER' are all surprisingly owned by Sam Heughan as an individual for the US and European market (including the UK)

Note that the first filings dates of My Peak Challenge and MPC are February 2016 and the first use date of the mark is stated at least as early as 12/31/2014

An example of the earliest use date is given as specimen where we can still see the Bear Strength MPC T-shirt

The attorney filing the trademark is the known attorney involved in other trademark filings from GGC

So it doesn't leave us much room or thoughts on who told Sam to file these trademarks. Though I'm glad he still is the sole owner of the trademarks.

Ergo, the answers this blogger gave to Anon are based on, to say it mildly, sloppy and incomplete research and incorrect assumptions presented without the context. I do not intend to attack her in any way though, but I dislike rewriting history based on assumptions and felt the need to put out the correct version.

[spellbook-gayboy]

Cape-Watch Monthly Bulletin- November 2022

Hello everyone! I’m Robert Keoghan, and I’m sure you must be wondering why I’m doing this month’s Bulletin and not Christina. While she certainly didn’t go down without a fight, she was forced to take medical leave in order to recover from some injuries she sustained, leaving me to fill in for her. While my style may be a little unfamiliar to you, I hope you can make it through this edition without getting too bored! That being said, November has posed some challenges for the world’s heroes unlike any seen before! Read below for more:

Invaders From Beyond!

It only seems right that the first story on the list be the most important one, as well as the one that landed Christina in the hospital. On the morning of November 8th, multiple cities around the USA, including the newspaper’s native Seattle, were suddenly overwhelmed by hordes of alien invaders that flooded the streets and grabbed anyone they could get their appendages on. The people attacked by these aliens, that we now know as ‘Sequids’, seemed to take control of these civilians, acting as beacons that directed the rest of their forces. Fortunately, these people were later freed by rescue efforts led by the Guardians of the Globe and several others, including the veteran Frontline as well as several newcomers. However, the precedent of this invasion was not lost on the government liaison to the American superhero community, Peter Schlottman, who had this to say about the attack:

‘The threat posed by the Sequids is unlike any we have ever seen before. While Earth is certainly no stranger to threats from beyond the stars, never before has an invading species been able to weaponize our own people against us and use them to further the invasion. This has been a worrying development, but the American people can rest assured that we will take every necessary step to counter any future invasion by the Sequids.’

Lastly, as I mentioned before, Christina was also injured in this attack when the Sequids attacked Cape-Watch HQ in downtown Seattle. She was also, for a short time, under their alien influence, staying this way until she was saved by Guardians member Monster Girl. The attack and her subsequent controlling left her with serious injuries that she is still recovering at the time of writing. Despite this, she still managed to find the strength to personally warn me that if I did this wrong, she’d ‘hunt me down and force-feed me the rotten leftovers from her niece’s Quinceanera’. Wish me luck, folks. 

Who is ‘The Kid’?

Our next story on the list is a bit of a weird one, I’ll admit. Rather than reporting on any particular event, this piece is instead dedicated to a rather open secret that still skirts the line of factuality: the mysterious case of ‘The Kid’, also known as ‘The Child’ or ‘The Small One’ depending on who’s talking. For those unaware of this particular urban myth, the long and short of it is as follows: there is a child, commonly believed to be a young girl no older than ten or eleven years old, who is raised not by a single parent or even a couple, but by the vast majority of the American superhero community. Before we delve any further, I feel it important to add a disclaimer saying that what I am about to discuss is mostly speculation, and that no concrete proof has yet been produced that confirms or disproves the existence of such a child.  

The beginnings of this theory can be traced back to a post made back in August on the popular online message board Oracl3s, containing an audio file that the poster claimed was a secretly recorded conversation between them and the Martian hero Shapesmith. The file’s authenticity is debatable, filled with white noise and distortion, but one phrase quickly attracted the attention of internet sleuths: ‘I’ve got only the kid for a couple more days before MM gets her’. The name MM is likely a reference to the Californian hero and close associate Magic Man, which prompted another user who lived in the mystic’s home city of San Diego to reply with a blurry photo. In it, the figure of Magic Man was visible next to a young girl and another adult, which the user claimed was him handing off the child to another hero. The discussion snowballed from there, hundreds of posters adding their own ‘evidence’ to support the theory, dragging in everyone from Fight Force to the new Guardians of the Globe and even members of Capes Inc USA. In response to the growing questions, the government liasion to the superhero community, Peter Schlottman, made the statement below:

‘While I cannot give a definitive answer to this question, I can say that as far as I am aware, there is no ‘Child’, nor are they being raised communally as those on Oracl3s believe so fervently. If there is such an occurrence, I can assure the American people that it would not be anywhere near as malicious as some would like you to believe. Any further information will be made available if it is available.’

In my opinion? I doubt there is a kid. I think that these online sleuths have simply fallen into the same pitfall that befalls a lot of ‘true crime’ communities: relentlessly pursuing a seemingly worthwhile story, without any concerns for either the actual truth of the matter, or for the privacy of those involved. The audio file that started this whole thing is dubious at best, while the supposed ‘proof’ of the photo may simply have been Magic Man talking to some civilians he had just helped. Overall, I would suggest that anyone interested in pursuing this idea further should take a handful of salt with it, as well as remembering two very important facts: a) that what you believe to be going on may not be correct, and b) that even if you are right, there is still an actual child at the centre of this, who doesn’t deserve to have their privacy violated for the sake of solving a mystery.

Biggest Event of the Season

This next story is no doubt well known to many of you who read this newspaper. Last week, it was officially announced by the Twitter account of famed superhero legend Frontline that the try-outs for his new team Breakthrough had officially begun, taking place in multiple government facilities around the globe. Since the pool of potential members is so much larger than any other team in the world, the recruitment process is expected to run not over the course of a few days as is typical, but over a minimum period of three months, meaning that the team will not have taken shape until late January at the earliest. 

While only just beginning, members of the public have already begun to pick favourites on who they believe will make the final cut: by far the most popular pick is the Nigerian heroine known as Omi, whose water-based powers and exceptional public presence have made her a celebrity in her home city of Port Harcourt. Another of the top choices is the size-altering French hero Quark Crusher (or Broyeur de Quarks in his native language), who has made a name for himself protecting the city’s 13th arrondissement, as well as serving as a role model for many of the children in the Parisian-Jewish community he hails from. 

Among these favoured choices also comes a very controversial contestant: one of the confirmed applicants from the facility in Bueno Aires is the Bolivian vigilante known only as ‘Vaquera’. The figure has quite the mixed reputation, with some praising her staggering progress in toppling the largest organised crime families in her home country, while others raise questions about the brutal methods that she used to achieve said progress. Already, there have been calls to exclude her from the qualifying try-outs, but these have been rebuked as ‘shameless attempts to justify discrimination against a potential member’, which is arguably true. Alongside the more valid concerns have come a slew of both racist and ableist comments against Vaquera (who is not only Hispanic, but also blind), which have only served to push the authorities to support her application. Vaquera herself declined to comment, citing preparation for her upcoming match against the Argentinian hero Devastador.

A Small Afterword from Christina

Hey, y’all! I really wanted to thank all of you for tuning in to read despite my absence, and for giving the new hire a chance to learn how to write. Not that he’ll ever write for the Bulletin again. I’d rather burn the office down than let him.

But regardless of who writes for this little segment (which is still me, by the way), we at the office want to take the time to again thank all of our supporters for their generous donations, as you guys are the ones that keep the lights on and keep all of us nice and warm during this Rainy City winter we’re going through right now!

One more thing that I’d like to make you guys aware of is that starting tomorrow, Cape-Watch will also be starting the annual charity drive, the proceeds of which will be used to help alleviate the horrible conditions faced by Seattle’s homeless this holiday season, so if you can spare the cash, we’d really appreciate you guy’s help. 

--- 

And that’s all for this month! Once again, we’d like to thank our donors who help keep the paper running, and we’ll be seeing you next month for the Cape-Watch Holiday Special Bulletin! This has been Robert Keoghan, reminding all of you folks at home to stay safe, stay hydrated, and to enjoy the holidays as best you can!

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

Welcome to this Special Sunday Edition of Saturday Morning Coffee. What makes it special you ask? Nothing! 😆

Kim, my lovely bride, let me sleep in yesterday. It was glorious! And since we had plans to be out of the house by around 10AM, well, that meant I couldn’t put things together yesterday. Now you know why you’re seeing this on Sunday.

Grab some coffee and enjoy the links!

Adele Peters • Fast Company

Last Saturday, as 39 million Californians went about their daily lives—taking showers, doing laundry, or charging their electric cars—the whole state ran on 100% clean electricity for more than nine hours.

I find this very encouraging and I believe it’s only going to get better.

Down the hill from where we live one of our power providers is installing a large field of solar panels. I don’t know how large it is or how much power it’ll generate, but I’m here for it.

Naomi Hartono • blogs.nasa.gov

For the first time since November, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems.

Engineers this smart blow my mind.

“Oh, the thing I need to repair is millions of miles away? No problem.” 😳

Rick Perlstein • The American Prospect

And that’s when the man in the castle with the seven fireplaces said it.

“I’m glad there’s OxyContin and video games to keep those people quiet.”

Andreessen is another piece of Silicon Valley garbage. Even if he said he was joking there’s always a nugget of truth in there. I’d say he really believes what he said.

Jesse Wegman • New York Times 🎁

Trump’s Immunity Case Was Settled More Than 200 Years Ago

That seems about right. We’ve managed to have 240+ years of Presidencies without one committing crimes against the nation that I doubt our founding fathers expected it to happen like this.

Trump is a rapist and a mob boss looking to use the Presidency as his own personal piggy bank.

I hope the Supremes do the right thing and declare the President isn’t above the law.

Wojciech Kulik

In my previous post, I just scratched the surface of iOS development in Neovim. Since then I discovered many new things that allowed me to move my development almost completely to Neovim.

If you’re really good with keyboard commands this could be the editor for you. I’ll stick with Xcode and BBEdit. 😄

AJ Willingham

I just don’t get Taylor Swift. There, I said it. (DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT DISLIKE HER. I WISH HER ALL OF THE HAPPINESS AND SUCCESS IN THE WORLD. PLEASE, I HAVE A FAMILY.)

Better be careful! The Swifties won’t be happy!

Remember the hubbub caused by Tool releasing their first album in 13 years keeping Ms. Swift’s new album out of the top spot? I do. It was kind of funny.

She’s a cultural phenomenon and apparently a very kind, caring, human being. What’s not to like?

John Viega

A few weeks ago, I got a bit miffed reading yet another article that was too dismissive about memory safety, basically being mostly dismissive about the need for change. The following weekend, I started seeing flippant responses from security luminaries, saying essentially that you’re irresponsible and dangerous unless you drop C and C++ faster than I dropped my 8 am classes my first year in college.

I’m an old curmudgeon and I still love C++ as a development language, especially if you’re doing something that needs to be cross platform. But, I certainly understand the trend and the desire to move to memory safe languages. Swift and Rust are both great choices. Swift has made development on Apple OS’es easier and safer. I love it! Rust is on my to learn list but given my latest project is React Native it makes more sense for me to learn JavaScript. Rust will have to wait.

Jonathan M. Gitlin • Ars Technica

Honda announced today that it will spend $11 billion to expand its electric vehicle manufacturing presence in North America. The Japanese automaker already has a number of factories in the US, Mexico, and Canada, and it’s this last one that will benefit from the expansion, with four EV-related plants planned for Ontario.

That’s a lot of money and it’s interesting it’s happening in Canada instead of the US.

Here’s to Honda building better, more affordable, EV’s than Tesla.

Gary Bernhard • Destroy All Software

This science fiction / comedy / completely serious talk traces the history of JavaScript, and programming in general, from 1995 until 2035. It’s not pro- or anti-JavaScript; the language’s flaws are discussed frankly, but its ultimate impact on the industry is tremendously positive. For Gary’s more serious (and less futuristic) thoughts on programming, try some Destroy All Software screencasts.

It’s easy to poke fun a JavaScript but equally as important to understand how important it’s become to our industry.

Dick Uliano • wtop.com

Archeologists have made a remarkable find at George Washington’s Mount Vernon in the ground beneath the cellar — two sealed bottles containing plump cherries.

Very cool! Now what? Who wants to open a jar and eat one? I kind of do, but there’s no way that’s gonna happen. 🤣

Did you know that while George Washington was away fighting the American Revolutionary War he was also writing home to instruct his brother how he wanted his home renovation to proceed. Then he’d go off and fight some redcoats.

Alex Franchuk • Mozilla

Porting a cross-platform GUI application to Rust

This is something my cross platform loving brain could get behind. The Mozilla team rewrote — not something I recommend — their crash reporting tool in 100% Rust. Nifty!

That included writing four abstractions for different UI toolkits; Mac, Windows, Linux, and one for testing. So three plus. 😄 Love it!

Digiday

The possibility of a TikTok ban is inching closer to becoming a reality at this point. On Tuesday, the Senate passed the bill that would bar the social media platform from operating in the U.S. unless ByteDance, its Chinese parent company, sells its stake.

So this was earlier in the week. The President signed it. Now ByteDance has nine months to get the deal done or pull out of the United States.

I still feel like this could’ve been handled differently but I have no idea what that would entail.

Jordan Rose

So let me re-iterate: the three-and-a-half features listed at the top are the only forms of run-time polymorphism in Swift. Now when someone asks “how can I allow arbitrary different argument types to result in different behavior”, you know the answer: make a protocol.

You heard the man! Make a protocol! That will cause the compiler to enforce the contract between your implementation and the definition. You’re obliged to implement it.

If you only need to know an object “is-a” thing that protocol doesn’t actually need to define any properties or methods. Yes, it can be that simple.

Manton Reece

Ghost has announced they are working on ActivityPub support

Manton has been on the open standards software train for years and years. That’s why Micro.blog implements ActivityPub, BlueSky’s AT Protocol, and Micropub.

Micro.blog is a great blogging tool for $5/month. I use it to post here.

Seth Godin

Don’t ignore AI because it’s dumb. Figure out how to create patterns and processes where you can use it as the useful tool it’s becoming.

Keep in mind that AI is just another tool, created by humans, full of flaws. Yes, it’s extremely useful, yes it can get things wrong. But, it’s still growing and changing. Hopefully it’ll will get better over time.

[ptersparkers]

obx masterlist

why am i obsessed with too many things brothas. uhhh also disclaimer that everyone here, in my head, is 20+ because i am not comfortable writing for people who are teenagers lmao.

WHO IS HARLEY MAYBANK?       (aka my writing project i have abandoned)

JJ MAYBANK

→ boston: as a recurring visitor from boston to the outer banks and one of kiara’s childhood friends, you get to know the pogue gang for the summer. oh, and it seems like jj has a thing for you.

→ whipped:  jj’s throwing an attitude. it seems like you’re the only one who can fix it.

→ affection: the two times jj maybank had rejected the affections of others and the one time he welcomed it.

→ my girl: maybe falling for one of your best friends wasn’t a good idea.

→ the tap of your fingertips: jj’s internal thoughts.

→ friends to this: jj tries to understand why his view of you changes.

→ study sessions (series): upon realizing you lack skills in the bedroom when a touron asks you out on a date, you turn to jj, a self-proclaimed sexual deviant, for help. co-authored with @storiesbymads.

→ hurt by you: before leaving college, your relationship with jj takes a turn for the worse. seeing him when you come back leaves a lot of lingering feelings and when jj decides to say something about it, you give him a piece of your mind.

→ wonder what she thinks of me: the new yorker who visits the outer banks for a few weeks out the year seems to have everyone under her spell and jj maybank is not an exception (nsfw).

→ best friend’s brother: you think jj’s cute, but he’s your best friend’s older brother.

→ the challenges of having sex in a dorm room: jj’s visiting you while at you’re at college and you take advantage of your roommate being gone for the weekend (part two to best friend’s brother, nsfw).

→ falling in love in a coffee shop: there’s something about that coffee shop on fourth avenue that jj maybank seems to love so much.

→ jj and the untimely prank: when a prank goes awry, jj’s at the receiving end of cruel intentions with a euphoric payoff. 

blurbs:

→ jj helps you when you’re hurt

→ you hurt your ankle and he becomes your crutch

JOHN B. ROUTLEDGE 

→ best friends: john b. always seems to be the talk of the town when tourists party with pogues and kooks alike, but what he doesn’t know is that you’re as attracted to him as these female tourists. 

→ meeting the mother: john b. meets your mom for the first time as your boyfriend and he’s starting to have his doubts.

blurbs:

→ john b. helps you after an unfortunate accident

POPE HEYWARD

→ pope’s secret: pope has a secret.

SARAH CAMERON

→ that’s my girlfriend: sarah’s ready for you to meet the pogues, but hasn’t quite told them about her relationship status. enter jj, self-proclaimed flirt. 

→ her brother’s girlfriend: sarah cameron happens to be in love with her brother’s girlfriend.

→ truth or dare: you’re the new girl moving in between the cut and figure eight, and sarah wants nothing to do with you. at least, not at first. 

→ lifeguard: when sarah gets stung by a jellyfish, you, the cute lifeguard, are there to save the day.

→ choose: you’re sarah cameron’s best friend. in her head, you’re much more than that. 

blurbs:

→ sarah helps you clean up when you get hurt

→ sarah helps you through a migraine

RAFE CAMERON

→ party mishaps and helpful brothers: when you’re unable to help yourself, your best friend’s brother’s the one to help.

→ two peas in a pod: you and rafe have a peculiar friendship.

→ primal urges: rafe gives into his urges (nsfw).

→ unexpected: you get an unexpected text from rafe (nsfw).

→ hotbox: you’re high out of your mind for the first time and rafe’s surprised by your sudden and explicit confession.

SIDE PROJECTS:

→ the maybanks: harley maybank, born harley summers, finds her quiet life in a small californian town turned upside down when she realizes she has two long lost older brothers. as told from the perspective of harley. 

WRITING CHALLENGE MASTERPOSTS:

scout’s writing challenge (1)

[anonymoushouseplantfan]

Quentin Letts in The Times (of London),

"Harry and Meghan interview ditches subtlety in embrace of tabloid television"

Monday March 08 2021, 5.28am, The Times

One o’clock in the morning and the sentries at Windsor Castle were having another quiet night, nothing to ruffle their Busbys. Five thousand miles to the west, kerrump, came eruptions which could send a tsunami across the Atlantic.

As a work of televised theatre, Oprah Winfrey’s interview was soft-focus: the setting bucolic, Queen Oprah in delicate mauve, shots of the royal couple’s pets and — privacy alert — of toddler Archie. There were meaningful, emotive nods as they said “yeah” to each other in the Californian manner.

But the content was unsubtle. This was Semtex in swaddling bands. Cyanide en gelee. The biggest act of strategic self-harm since the scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow. It may have been presented as schmaltz but this two-hour gloopathon was politically ruinous.

“Life is about telling stories, right?” said la Markle, all high-resolution lip gloss. “Telling stories through a truthful lens.” Her eyes sparkled behind lashes as long as ravens’ wings.

Stories were duly delivered, a steaming dump of indiscretions: whinges about money and titles and bodyguards and the rotten tabloid press (which must be quite different from tabloid television). That Kate Cambridge? A B*I*T*C*H! “But I have forgiven her,” purred Meghan with her truthful lens.

Further atrocities: she had had to teach herself the words to God Save the Queen; no one had advised her how to keep her legs crossed; people had been beastly about her on the internet. We had our first blinked-back tear at 1.54am. Either that, or some unfortunate midge had made it past the ravens’ wings and had jabbed her in the eyeball.

Then came the intended killer blow: someone in royal circles had speculated about what skin tone the Sussexes’ baby was going to have. “That conversation I am never going to share,” said Prince Harry, after he and his wife had disgorged its existence to a worldwide audience.

Every so often we broke away for the CBS adverts, many aimed at hypochondriacs or handsome people who were smiling through bouts of raging diarrhoea. Useful context.

Harry had not appeared in the first half, when we were assured Meghan was not a gold-digger. “I never looked up my husband online,” she claimed, when Oprah asked if she had done her “research”. Harry now took his place alongside his duchess and we found he has started saying “like” and he has the beginnings of an American accent. He disclosed that his father stopped taking his telephone calls for a while. Maybe Charles simply didn’t recognise him with that valley girl uplift.

And yet Harry was less clunkingly dim than one possibly expected. He has certainly drunk deeply of the west-coast Kool-Aid. At one point he made it sound as if he himself had breastfed Archie.

The programme was entitled Meghan & Harry. Most of us used to put them the other way round. Her Grace wore a dark dress with white splodges. Blasted seagulls. She, in turn, proceeded to deposit industrial quantities of guano on a royal family that had, we heard, welcomed her warmly to their midst. Things only started to go wrong after the row about the bridesmaids’ dresses. Or was it after the couple’s official trip to the Pacific (translation: the rest of “the Firm” were envious of its success)? We heard both.

Further inconsistencies followed. One minute Meghan disclaimed grandeur, the next she was concerned about her “status”. One moment she was unfussed about honorifics, the next she was furious Archie was not going to be a prince. She was astonished when her police protection was withdrawn (bodyguards are a must-have accessory in Hollywood). The next she was writing to the Queen to say she didn’t care less about protection. Oprah let these self-contradictions go through to the wicketkeeper.

It ended with Meghan comparing herself — sorry about this — to the Little Mermaid and Harry saying “time heals all things, hopefully”. Someone possibly said the same to the Earl of Uxbridge at the Battle of Waterloo, even as much of one of his legs was disappearing over the brow of the hill attached to a cannon ball.

[ynsrg]

PRETENDING

CHAPTER 1

**Disclaimer: Hey, it’s an ‘actor meets actor and gets horny for them’ fic! I’m sorry for writing this but I’m down bad. Bo is just a character, I apologise profusely if this ever gets read by the wrong people, etc. etc. I also have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about – this fic is stupid, makes very little sense, and has a very thin plot from which I have dangled smut, like a garden trellis. I have another, much longer, fic in the works (25,000 words and counting) but I very much doubt it’ll see the light of day because my OC is American in it, and I’m legitimately terrible at writing American dialogue, so I wrote this about a scouse bird instead (it’s what I know) and did my best to make it work. This fic will include no family members because that’s really weird. Sorry in advance!**

Chapter 2: https://ynsrg.tumblr.com/post/660912110046429184/pretending

Chapter 3: https://ynsrg.tumblr.com/post/660912269314670593/pretending

Chapter 4: https://ynsrg.tumblr.com/post/660912544504004608/pretending

She misses Liverpool. It sounds ridiculous, and as the Californian sun beams down, making everyone and everything it touches look somehow glamorous, she feels ridiculous. This – here – is everything she’s ever wanted, everything she dreamed of, everything she’s worked for; but she misses her city, her home town, her Liverpool. L.A. is too sprawling, too lacking in soul, and takes itself entirely too seriously. She doesn’t really want to be here so much as a second longer than she absolutely has to.

Maybe acting isn’t the career for you, Catherine.

She sighs heavily and swirls the straw around in her drink. She doesn’t even particularly like iced coffee, the entire concept seems… off to her, but here she is with her iced coffee all the same.

“Am I boring you?” The sardonic voice from across the table interrupts her moping, and she responds with an apologetic smile.

“Sorry, mate. I’m a little…” she grimaces, “… homesick.”

“Ah, yes. Because there is, somehow, an entire city full of people with accents like yours. It is a real place,” he smirks, “somehow.”

Catherine rolls her eyes and flicks her straw at him, pleased to note that she’s got some of the coffee on his white tee. “Gobshite.”

He snorts. “And just what the hell is a ‘gobshite’?”

“Look in the mirror and you’ll have your answer,” she replies flatly, leaning back and tilting her chin up in defiance.

He raises an eyebrow at her. “I’m assuming I should be offended?”

“Probably,” Catherine shrugs. “But you seem quite hard to offend.”

“I’m actually very sensitive, Cath.”

“Uh-huh.”

Silence falls between them again, and Catherine shifts in her seat, a little uncomfortably. He notices.

“So, tomorrow.” He runs a hand through his dirty blonde hair, which is something she’s noticed he does quite a bit when he’s anxious or nervous about something. Given the context of their current situation, the fact that he’s doing it now makes her anxious and nervous.

“Yes, Bo?” She responds wearily, and he eyes her like she’s a wounded, cornered animal that could lash out at any moment.

“Uh…” he taps his fingers on the table, searching for his words, which is quite unlike him. “So, I know we’re like, friends.”

“We are?” Catherine raises an eyebrow, working hard to keep a straight face.

Is he blushing?

“I mean, I think so?” He frowns at her, a little furrow between his brows, and her face cracks into a smile. “Ah, you’re fucking with me.”

“I am,” she says proudly, and he rolls his eyes.

“Anyway. So, friends means tomorrow might be, ah… weird,” he pinches the bridge of his nose and she fidgets in her seat again.

“This isn’t my first rodeo, Bo,” she says cautiously, trying to ignore the knot in her stomach.

“I know, I know,” he replies quickly, picking up on her defensive tone. “Just, um… if anything feels… if you’re uncomfortable, just say the word, okay?”

Okay.

He’s avoiding Catherine’s eyes, fiddling with the bracelet on his wrist. “That’s sweet,” the words leave her mouth seemingly without any input from her brain and shit, she didn’t mean to say that out loud.

He huffs out a laugh. “Jesus, I can’t believe I’ve met someone more sarcastic than me.”

Thank fuck for that.

“Aye, I’m a proper cunt,” she nods, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips as she squints at him across the table.

“A fucking horror,” he agrees, trying and failing miserably to imitate her accent.

Catherine recoils. “What the fuck was that, Bo?!”

“Um…” he pulls a face, “scouse?”

She shakes her head slowly. “Never, ever do that again. Promise me.”

He laughs again, and there’s a bit of her that’s proud that she makes that happen as often as she does. Guy’s one of the biggest comedians on the planet and she makes him laugh on a regular basis. Bit mad, that.

“Catherine Mary McHale, I promise I will never, ever do that again.” He extends his hand across the table. Large. What a ridiculously large man, who remembers your middle name, for some reason.

She narrows her eyes at him. “I don’t believe you, but okay.”

She extends her much, much smaller hand and meets him in a firm handshake. The knot in her stomach returns immediately, but when he releases her hand, it doesn’t make her feel any better.

“Alright then,” he shifts his chair back and picks up his phone. “I’d better get back.”

Catherine nods a little dumbly, head feeling a bit fuzzy.

He rises to his feet – large, huge, why is this fella a giant – and cocks his head to one side, peering down at her with a weird expression written across his features.

“What is it?” Catherine frowns up at him. “Have I got shite on my face?”

Bo laughs again, loudly and his eyes are crinkled at the corners and he has a dimple on his right side, she noticed that within about 30 seconds of meeting him for the first time. “No, Cath, you haven’t got ‘shite’ on your face.”

Air quotes, seriously?

She keeps looking up at him, eyebrows raised, foot tapping impatiently. “So, why are you staring?”

He slips his phone into his pocket and folds his arms across his chest. “I’m not staring.”

“You literally are. Here, you look like this.” She widens her eyes as much as physically possible and pulls a creepy face which she’s sure looks absolutely disgusting.

“You are a very attractive woman, Catherine,” he drawls, straight-faced, and he’s clearly and obviously being sarcastic, so she has absolutely no idea why her face is heating up.

“Fuck you, Bo,” she smiles up at him sweetly and he raises an eyebrow.

Weird.

“I’ll see you later?”

“Well, yes, pal. We’re acting in a movie together.”

He smirks. “Right.”

She nods. “Right.”

“Bye.”

“Ta-ra.”

Catherine watches his retreating form until he’s out of sight, and then she releases a shaky breath that she didn’t realise she’d been holding.

[fatehbaz]

iirc there are also a few coastal marine fishes with disjunct ranges that stop around cape Mendocino and pick up again around Vancouver Island. I think the kelpfishes Gibbonsia metzi and G. montereyensis might be some? Interesting to hear about the sky salamander having a similar distribution. Not sure if the fish disjunction is real or just a lack of info from the outer coasts of WA and OR tho, but maybe supports the natural dispersal hypothesis for the salamanders?

Oh thank you, this is really good to know. I know practically nothing about the marine ecology in the North Pacific. (Vibrant seas; there is so much sea life in the region, I don’t even know where to begin. I’m more familiar with terrestrial rainforest/PNW landscape,.) Off the top of my head, I know of one marine species, bat stars (Patiria miniata), which have a similarly disjunct distribution. For a long while, I have had some guesses about why some rainforest species have disjunct distribution ranges, separated, isolated in California and Vancouver Island. (Big disclaimer: I am horrible with chemistry/biochemistry. Know little about physics. Bad with technical ecology. Instead, mostly into geography, biogeography, human ecology, historical environmental change, etc. But I love salamanders and PNW geography enough to venture a couple of guesses in this case.) What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

For anyone interested, we’re talking about Aneides vagrans, a salamander endemic to the Pacific Northwest. Here’s what I said about them: Though, something about the temperate rainforest canopy that might be surprising? The “sky salamander.” Rainforest creature, a lover of fog. [...] Weirdly, there are two separate populations of this salamander, with a great distance between them. Some of these salamanders live in the rainforest of Vancouver Island. But the other population? In the redwoods forest of coastal northern California, the salamanders also permanently reside up to 95 meters above ground in the canopies of redwoods, where moss beds and epiphytic fern mats, resting in bark crevices and on redwoods branches, create refuge and provide small amphibian-friendly microhabitats in the sky. They can spend their entire life up there, in the fog. [...] If this is a coastal rainforest species, why are they living in rainforest  of northern California and in the rainforest of Vancouver Island, but  not in all that rainforest in between? [...] A leading theory proposed by Canadian ecologists suggests that the salamander made its way to Vancouver Island naturally, in recent centuries/millennia, by rafting on the thousands of large conifer logs that fall into northern California’s water and flow northward towards the Raincoast. (Original post about salamanders living in the canopy.)

Here’s the dilemma. (This is where the salamander lives.)

Aside from the sky salamander, there are a few other terrestrial creatures that I know of, which share a similar disjunct distribution pattern. As for animals, there is Edward’s beach moth (Anarta edwardsii), which is found in coastal California and Vancouver Island, and nowhere in-between despite all of the similar/suitable habitat. (There are some isolated records along Salish Sea coast near Mt. Vernon and Port Angeles in Washington State, to be fair.) There are many species of butterflies, which inhabit coastal dunes and oak-prairie of the Salish Sea lowlands, which are endemic to the PNW. But this Anarta species has one of the coolest disjunct distribution ranges. (Photo and map from Canadian federal government, COSEWIC.)

But the moth might not be a good comparison, because it’s more like a Mediterranean ecosystem species, rather than a rainforest species.

As for plants, Canada’s federal SARA Registry names about 25 that have disjunct populations at Vancouver Island and at milder climates farther south along the PNW/California coast: Graceful beauty ornamental onion; Clarkia purpurea viminea; Ranunculus californicus; Trifolium depauperatum; Montia howellii; Isoetes nuttallii; Woodwardia fimbriata; Vulpia pacifica; Myrica californica; Minuartia pusilla; Microseris bigelovii; and a few others.

When thinking about the disjunct populations of plants/animals living in California and Vancouver Island, I would probably distinguish between two kinds of disjunct ecosystems: (1) Creatures that live in dryland Garry oak savanna/woodland/prairie. And (2) creatures that live in temperate rainforest. I think that the disjunct populations of dryland/oak species make a little more sense, or are more obvious, while the disjunct distribution of rainforest species seem harder to interpret. The Garry oak savanna/woodland of the Salish Sea lowlands at Victoria and the Gulf Islands is in a rain shadow and experiences mild winters, and I would say the ecology is not dissimilar from Mediterranean environments of California; the oak in the Victoria area thus harbors isolated populations of other “Californian” species like endemic prairie-oak butterflies, the sharp-tailed snake (Contia tenuis) and, historically, the Pacific gophersnake (Pituophis catenifer catenifer) on a couple of the Gulf Islands offshore of Victoria. (There is also a disjunct population of Northwestern fence lizards, more typical of Nor-Cal, living on the shores of the Salish Sea.) These make more sense to me, because dry oak-prairie with Mediterranean-climate dry warm summers and mild winters are like distinct pockets of suitable habitat, easier to identify. And the corridor of oak woodland through Medford-Ashland, Willamette Valley, and the South Puget Prairies provides an avenue of dispersal into the Salish Sea lowlands and eastern Vancouver Island’s rain shadow.

But the rainforest species, like the sky salamander?

Even if the salamanders did arrive in Vancouver in the Pleistocene/early Holocene by rafting from California, there are some qualities of Vancouver Island that I think might’ve been welcoming to the salamanders.

My guesses:

1. Glacial refugia: The Brookes Peninsula (northwestern Vancouver Island) seems to have operated as a glacial refugia for terrestrial species, notably some ferns, mosses, and lichens. Canada’s SARA Registry, for material on the Brookes refugia, recommends: Shafer et al. 2010; Hebda and Haggarty 1997; Pojar 1984. (Rainforest species that used to live all across the PNW between the island and northern California may have lost their populations in Washington/Oregon, but survived on the island and in California.)

2. Mild winters and/or less snow. Northern California and the western shore of Vancouver Island may provide milder winters compared to rainforest of Cascades slopes in Washington/Oregon. I know this might sound silly, given that the western shores of Vancouver Island get completely battered by severe violent oceanic storms and are at higher latitudes than Washington/Oregon, but the western shores of Vancouver Island (being so “hyper-maritime” compared to Washington/Oregon, even more marine-influenced) receive more rain in winter, compared to winter snow in Washington/Oregon. For salamanders and mosses/lichens/ferns that can survive cold/violent wind but don’t like snow, this might be suitable for extending activity seasons.

3. Consistent year-round moisture (lots of fog in Nor-Cal which redwoods epiphyte communities access to maintain moist microclimates, and lots of liquid/rain on Vancouver Island relative to the more-seasonal precipitation of Washington/Oregon). Just guessing, but if the rainforest of Washington/Oregon is just a bit seasonal, receiving rain/moisture at specific times/seasons during the year, then the western shores of Vancouver Island and the redwoods forests of coastal northern California might receive more consistent wetness/moisture? This is probably more obvious at western Vancovuer Island, one of the wettest/rainiest places on the planet. And again, I know it might sound silly, but the redwoods in California? I know that rain is seasonal in Nor-Cal, and I know that temperatures and evapotranspiration are higher here, but the fog, the consistent fog even in summer, might partially compensate, by providing a source of moisture for salamanders and plants that would prefer to live in a wet hyper-maritime rainforest but can also manage to survive by taking advantage of fog.

Here, in the Canadian federal government’s biogeoclimatic region classifications, the western shore of Vancouver Island would pretty much be the most significant site that is simultaneously “very wet” and “hypermaritime.” Very wet = good moisture for salamanders, ferns, and moss. Hypermaritime = insulated against snowy frigid winters. (Labeled here as “VH1.”) The Great Bear Rainforest along the mainland would also be “very wet / hypermaritime” but is more mountainous and at higher latitudes, not exactly nice for the salamanders.

Also: canopy microclimates. As with the sky salamander, the researchers focused on these amphibians discuss how the epiphytic fern mats in redwoods (and Douglas fir) canopies collect so much moisture, and are at such high altitude relative to the forest floor, that the fern mats produce their own microclimates. Even in summer, when there is less rain, the amount of marine fog that rolls through the redwoods forest provides a source of moisture for the epiphyte communites to extract.

I also want to mention some “typical” sub-regions and classifications of the PNW rainforest, to say that I kinda think that Vancouver Island’s rainforest doesn’t get enough credit in US/EPA ecoregion classifications. I think it might make more sense to distinguish Vancouver Island’s rainforest from the rainforest of Washington/Oregon, with which it usually gets categorized as a contiguous ecoregion. I know that, typically, some ecologists/geographers would distinguish 4 sub-regions of the PNW rainforest. It seems like these distinctions were influenced by a late-1990s publication from Ecotrust (”Rainforests of Home,” mostly about salmon and watershed health).

Usually, Vancouver Island rainforest just gets lumped together with Washington/Oregon rainforest as “seasonal / mild.” So maybe it’s possible that both the California redwoods zone and western Vancouver Island are distinct from Washington/Oregon rainforest, and are similarly more-favorable for the sky salamander.

My understanding is that Vancouver Island’s rainforest is much wetter than Washington/Oregon.

I think that maps of differing rainforest soils better represent the distinction between Vancouver Island and Washington/Oregon:

I don’t know, maybe this too:

Between the good wintertime plant hardiness of that redwoods zone and western Vancouver Island, the rainforest of Washington/Oregon might be less hospitable in winter, depending on the metrics you used to judge plant hardiness. Like, I’m not saying that western Vancouver Island’s winter season is necessarily more hospitable to plants than the Washington/Oregon rainforest farther south, but is it possible that the ferns/mosses/lichens that already live on western Vancouver Island are hardy to begin with, and also do well because of winter rain, as opposed to winter snow of the Cascades? I don’t know.

As for marine creatures, the two that I was aware of were these:

-- Eisnea arborea, a seawood, disjunct distribution at Haida/Vancouver and central California.

-- a sea star, disjunct distribution Tlingit/”Alexander” Islands, Haida, Vancouver, and central California.

“No Bat Star Zone.” Lol.

This map from ChrisM’s “The Echinoblog.” [Good discussion of bat stars if anyone’s interested.]

Like I mentioned, there are a few other vertebrates that have a disjunct distribution, but they’re more like prairie-oak, dryland, or Mediterranean species.

Like this. (Northwestern fence lizard and sharp-tailed snake.)

(Sorry for the shitty maps. Again, I am forced to use M!crosoft Paint, the “working-class Arc-GIS.”)

But again, I know nothing of marine biology, really. And I imagine there are so many more influences on underwater ecology here, more obscure than what happens on land.

Love these creatures, regardless.

[alloftheimagines]

billy hargrove | heaven-sent | part six

masterlist | series | part five

words: 2k+

warnings: mentions of death, abuse, fighting, swearing, drinking, aggression, non-consensual kiss

disclaimer: i in no way support the actions of billy. i just find his character interesting and want to explore it more with my oc. takes place from season 2. OC is hopper’s daughter.

summary:  she’s an angel. he may as well be the devil. one would not exist without the other.

The gentle hum of the engine is peaceful as the Camaro cruises through Hawkins. Billy doesn’t try to cover it with his music the way he usually would. After the night he’s had, he’s grateful for the quiet. He’s unable to forget the way his father’s fist collided with his face earlier, his cheek still throbbing painfully. His jaw aches, too, and he realises he’s been clenching it for hours. He relaxes it now as best he can, his attention drawn away from it entirely when they pass a bunch of wilted flowers placed randomly on the side of the road. There are unlit candles, too, the wax melted into the concrete.

“Someone die there or somethin’?” he asks without thinking.

From the corner of his eye, he sees Frances flinch and regrets asking. “Yeah. Her name was Barb.”

“Did you know her?” He glances at her, but she isn’t looking at him, her head turned away as she gazes out of the window.

“She was my best friend.”

Jesus. I’m—” He sucks in a breath, his grip tightening on the steering wheel sub-consciously. Sorry, he wants to say, but somehow the word doesn’t do it justice. “What happened to her?”

“She was killed.” She tucks a strand of brown hair behind her ear, her eyes hardening as she turns them back on the road ahead. She still won’t look at him.

“Shit,” he whispers. “Did they catch ‘em?”

“No.” She shakes her head, her voice cracking. Her chest is heaving as though she’s suppressing a sob or is struggling to breathe. He shuffles in his seat, unsure what to do or say. He doesn’t need to force anything out: she continues before the right words come. “I should have been there that night. She begged and begged for me to come to this stupid party with her at Steve Harrington’s house. Nancy was forcing her. She wasn’t really part of that crowd and she didn’t wanna be alone, always said it was easier for her when I was there. She died alone.”

“It’s not your fault,” Billy replies softly. It’s easier for him to be soft in the dark; easier to allow himself to sound as though he gives a damn. “You couldn’t have known.”

“But I did,” she hits back, looking at him now. Her eyes are shiny with tears, her hands clinging to her camera desperately. “I had this awful feeling in my chest, like I couldn’t breathe, all fucking night—only I thought it was because Jonathan’s brother was missing. I was so busy looking for him with my dad that I wasn’t there for Barb. Now she’s gone. And I knew.”

Her face is illuminated in the pale headlights passing on the other side of the road, and for a moment her eyes seem to flicker, blaze, change. Her irises, once a green that reminded Billy of the Californian sea on a rare, grey day, are now golden. He does a double take, almost swerving the car in the process, but when he looks again they look as they always did: murky ocean eyes half-hiding behind dark lashes and unruly bangs.

“Shit,” he curses, forcing his eyes back on the road. “Your eyes.”

She frowns, paling and pulling down the overhead mirror with enough force that Billy is worried she might break his damn car. “What?”

“Nothin’, I—” he stutters, blinking and looking at her again. Had he imagined it? Was it the light off the other car? “I thought you had something in your eye. It was nothin’.”

He pulls into the clearing where the trailer stands, lonely and grey against the black lake. The tyres roll against the gravel unevenly, the engine cutting out and replaced with silence.

“Your dad home?” he asks, just as he had the previous night. The trailer’s windows are dark, the house empty and solitary where it stands. He can’t imagine calling this place a home, even with his own circumstances.

“No,” she replies, unfastening her seat-belt slowly. “You wanna come in for a while? I could use that drink, now.”

He nods, a small smile playing on his lips as he takes the keys out of the ignition and grabs the bottle of whisky from beside him. “Sure. Why not?”

* * *

The trailer isn’t as small as it looks from the outside. It’s cosy, earthy, and he can imagine Frances pottering about on it on a Saturday, drinking coffee with the patterned curtains closed to block out the low winter sun. Still, he can’t imagine sleeping in this thing alone. They’re basically in the middle of nowhere. He can’t even smell cow shit out here, and the lake is eerily still even in the wind.

“Your dad work a lot?” He places the whiskey on the kitchen counter and she pulls out two glasses from the oak cupboards, standing on her tip-toes and arching her back to reach.

“Yeah. I’m used to it now.”

“You don’t get scared out here alone?” he teases, leaning against the counter.

She pours the whiskey carefully and slides his tumbler towards him, taking a sip of her own. If the burn fazes her, she doesn’t show it. “I’m always scared. Doesn’t make a difference if I’m out here or in the middle of town.”

“Because of Barb?”

She shrugs. Her cheeks are flushed from the short walk between the car and the trailer, making the small cut on her cheek appear redder than it did before. “Because of a lot of things. You need ice for that bruise?”

He had forgotten about it for the first time tonight. He touches it now as if to remind himself, trying to hide his wince as he realises how tender it is. “I’m good,” he says despite himself.

She rolls her eyes, kneeling down to rifle through the freezer. When she comes up, she’s holding frozen peas. She chucks them at him, and he catches reluctantly, pressing them gently to his face. “Thanks.”

“So, where did you move from?” she questions, leading him to the couch and sitting down, whiskey in hand. He follows, sitting beside her, perhaps a little closer than he had meant to. He doesn’t make an effort to budge down.

“California.”

“Yeah?” Her eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “That’s a little different than Hawkins. What was it like?”

“It was …,” he sighs, unable to find the right words. Nobody had asked him that yet, really. Nobody in Hawkins cared about Billy’s old life. Sometimes, it no longer feels as though it exists at all. “It was home. I basically lived on the beach. Had bonfires most nights, spent my days out in the sun. There was always something happening, too. Carnivals, fairs, gigs. You’d love it. You'd get some amazing photographs.”

“Yeah,” she smiles, hanging on his every word. He can’t help but look at her again, at her eyes that he’d been sure had changed. They were still green, still the closest he could get to his favourite place. “I bet. You must miss it like crazy.”

“More than anything,” he admits, sipping his drink to distract himself from the sudden attention. “What about you, you lived here your whole life?”

“Actually, I lived in New York for a while when I was a kid. My mom still lives there with her new husband.”

“Did you like it?”

She shakes her head, leaning back into the couch as her eyes glaze over for a moment, remembering. “I did. Now, it just reminds me of things I’d rather forget.”

“Like?”

“I think I’ve told you enough of my little sob story tonight,” she laughs, but Billy can tell it isn’t genuine. He can’t help but wonder if they’re more alike than he thought, looking at the cut on her cheek again. Did the chief do that? He seems to walk around town in an eternally foul mood: it wouldn’t necessarily surprise him if he took it out on her.

He finds himself inching closer to her, so close that their foreheads are almost touching. “I like talking to you. You’re the only person in this shitty town I can stand to be around, even if you are all gloom and doom.”

“Gee, thanks.” Sarcasm drips from her words without conviction. He can hear her breath coming out quicker as he looks down at her soft, pink lips longingly. She doesn’t close the distance, so he takes it upon himself.

Their lips press together for only a moment before her hands are on his stomach, pushing him away. She stands up, crossing her arms over her chest as though she’s naked rather than fully clothed with layers of knitwear. Her face is bright red, her eyes blazing. “What the fuck, Billy?”

“What?” he replies cluelessly, raking his hand through his hair and pretending as though his cheeks aren’t heating up in embarrassment. He can’t remember the last time he was rejected.

“What?” Frances repeats in disbelief. “God, what was this? Were you just trying to get into my pants the entire fucking time? Driving me home, getting back my camera, listening to me when I talk about my dead friend and my cheating boyfriend because I’m a fucking idiot who thought that maybe you weren’t so bad, that maybe you actually gave a shit?”

He’s speechless, licking his dry lips as he tries to figure out what to say. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“Why would I ever want that? I just ended a two-year relationship with my best fucking friend.”

“And I’m great at rebound sex,” he answers as though it’s obvious. He can feel anger beginning to bubble in him, not because he’s mad at her words, but because she’s yelling—and he still doesn’t know why. “Why else am I hear, Fran? You wanna talk about feelings all night while you braid my damn hair? Cuddle by the fuckin’ fire with a mug of hot cocoa, marshmallows on top? You’re not stupid. You know I’m not that guy.”

Tears are pricking her eyes again, and this time she doesn’t blink them back. He’s not sure she even knows she’s crying in her own, blind rage. “So all of this was just for sex? All of it?”

Billy softens at the sadness in her voice, his elbows digging painfully into his thighs as he puts his head in his hands and takes a breath. “No, it wasn’t like that. I didn’t plan all this just to screw you. I just … When you invited me in, I thought—”

“Thought you’d shoot your shot,” she finished bitterly. “Of course you did; of course opening my door to you automatically meant opening my legs, too. You’re a fucking asshole, Billy. I don’t know why I let you in. I don’t know why I let any of this happen. Just get out.”

“Fran—” he says desperately, standing up from the couch and walking around the coffee table to meet her.

“Get out, Billy!” Frances shouts. “Get the fuck out!”

She pushes him backwards with more force than he’d been expecting, sending him flying straight into the door. It falls open against his weight, and he falls with it, landing on the porch. His defeated, shocked body is illuminated by the white porch light.

Frances stands in the doorway, speechless. Clearly, she had been expecting this as much as he had.

“Jesus!” he yells when he’s able to find the words. It hurts him, being treated this way. He could take it from his father, his friends, the shitheads he beats up at school and parties, but he hadn’t been expecting her to touch him like that—and it’s clear she hadn’t meant to by the way she looks at him as though he’s broken, as though she’s broken him, though she can’t know what this means to him. “What the fuck is wrong with you? You’re a crazy bitch, you know that?”

“Fuck you,” she whispers weakly as he pulls himself up, using the fence as support. “Leave me alone, Hargrove.”

“Gladly,” he responds, his upper lip curling in contempt. His hands are balled into fists as he marches away, barely sparing her a glance as he slams the door of the Camaro shut after sliding into the driver’s seat. His tyres struggle against the gravel, spitting out dust and dirt as he speeds away, watching her retreating figure standing in the threshold of the trailer in the rear-view mirror.

part seven

[logancreatesworlds]

Black Folks Don’t Do That Shit

Author’s Note:  Hello everyone!  So I got this idea after seeing a Tumblr post with Lupita Nyong’o and it kinda just spiraled from there.  Hope you all like it!

Warnings: Some harsh language and that’s it...for now.  😈😈😈

Disclaimer:  None of the images used are mine.

Prologue

You shook nervously as your eyes shot open.  Harsh breaths hit your lungs as you tried your best to sit up, your heart drumming as if it were part of a marching band.  Something stopped you.  You looked down at your wrists to see that they were bound to a bed.

You pulled and pulled with all your might, but it was useless. 

Then, the door opened and she walked in.

Your eyes narrowed, “You.”

She smiled, “Yes kitten, me.”

“You drugged me.”

“Yes.  To make you more…compliant.”

She sat down and smiled pleasantly.

Her red lips curled upwards like a Cheshire Cat.

It was almost like things were normal, like she was normal…

But she wasn’t.

She ran her clawed hand up your naked thigh, her bright red eyes alight with undead interest.

You should kick her, fight her – do something, but you didn’t.

Black folks don’t do that shit.

“So sad to see you leaving,” Pepper Potts commented as she watched you pack your last suitcase, her red lips sticking out in a thin line of her pale face.

“Yeah,” you agreed, “But I have to be moving on.  Can’t stay in the same place for too long, right?”

“Well,” Pepper said, “If your path leads you back to New York, you always have a job here.”

“Thank you,” you replied, giving her one last hug.

Today was your last day over at Stark Tower as the Stark family’s personal chef.  Sure, Friday could have done it, but Tony insisted on paying you 15$ an hour to work during the week after tasting your banana pudding.

However, cooking the same healthy ass Californian recipes were just getting too old.  You were forgetting why you enjoyed cooking in the first place.

You quietly sat on the next Amtrak train back to your home – New Orleans, Louisiana.

Time to get reconnected.

_

“Mama!”

“(Y/N)!  Oh my babygirl, you’re home!”

You squeezed her tightly as her familiar scent filled your nose.

Pears, lilac, fresh linen...

“I missed you,” you said, kissing her cheek.

“And I missed you too,” she replied, “Come on in.  I got your favorite cookin’.”

“Crawfish n’ rice?”

“Yup.  And we also have pecan pie.”

“Of which I will be getting the first slice,” a familiar voice said.

While that voice didn’t disturb your mother, it still scared you even now.

“(Y/N),” your mama said, “You remember Sunny, don’t you?”

How could you forget him?

“Of course,” you replied, plastering a falsified smile on your face.

“Good to see you (Y/N).”

“You too.”

A brief, awkward silence washed over the room, but your mother - ever the perfectionist mediatior, quickly ushered you upstairs to help you unpack.

This was going to be a long visit.

_

You sighed softly as you breathed in through your nose.

The New Orleans air was thick with the scent of car oil, sweat, trumpets and dough frying into beignets.

It smelled like home.

But there was something else in the air.

Children’s laughter, bubbling chocolate, pumpkin rinds...

Halloween, or it would be in thirteen days.

It was fitting, given all the smell of spook in the wind and jack-o’-lanterns on porches.

It was your favorite time of year.

Feeling invigorated, you walked into a farmer’s market and up to a local vendor who was carrying a rather large flower stand with him.

“Excuse me, kind sir?”

“Why hello lady,” he said in that familiar southern accent, “What can I do you for?”

“I’m looking for some translucent orchids,” you said, “Do you have any available?”

“Translucent orchids?  Hmmm roses...daffodils...lilac.  Nope.  No orchid.  Sorry sweetie.”

“Thanks anyway.”

You continued to walk, quietly ghosting through the loud and boisterous crowd.

Despite feeling invisible, you could feel someone watching you - like you weren’t alone.

You wish, you though petulantly to yourself.

You looked upon the fruits and vegetables, fitting in between families of black fathers, ebony mothers and swart children.

They all seemed so happy...

Sighing, you got to the other end of the market and looked back.

For a second, it seemed like the world slowed down.

Then...

“Penny for your thoughts?”

You turned around and saw a woman.

Now she stuck out.

Her dark skin stood out against the umbrella she was holding and her black outfit was only matched by her tinted glasses.

She looked like the night itself.

Nevertheless, you spoke to her.

“Just not in the Halloween spirit,” you replied.

“Such a shame,” she commented, “New Orleans is a place of magic.  And you seem like you are in tuned with its charm.”

“Me?”  You scoffed and laughed.  “I’m not much “in tuned” with anything to tell ya’ the truth...”

“Well,” she replied, “Perhaps I can change that.”

She extended her hand to you, and in her dark manicured fingers lied a small card.

You read the mysterious writing.

‘The Udaku Family’

“The Udaku Family huh?  Since when do families have their own cards?”

“The couple I work for is a bit...unorthodox.  And they need a new cook.”

You furrowed your brow, “How did you know I was a cook?”

She smiled, “You were looking at the fruits and vegetables the most, and you seemed disgusted with the ones that looked too ripe.  Only someone who is planning to cook is concerned with such affairs.”

“Well aren’t you observant?”

“I’m trained to see what’s in front of me.”

“So...your boss is looking for a cook.  When do you want me to come?”

“Tonight,” she answered, “A black Cadillac shall pick you up.”

“But you don’t even know where I live?”

“Don’t worry.  We’ll find you.”

You briefly looked down at the card, “Look lady, I-”

She was gone.

_

You quietly looked out the window, anxiously waiting for that black car to roll up.

Was this a good idea?  Of course not.

“They were probably sex traffickers looking for an innocent young girl,” your mother had said.

Still, you were going.

Yes, this is how literally every white girl got kidnapped in all the horror movies you watched, but something pulled you towards that woman at the market today.

There was that intuition in the back of your mind...

‘Don’t go to this weird ass house.  Black folks don’t do that shit.’

And yet?  You didn’t listen to it.

Soon, a car rolled up in front of the main walkway.

A Cadillac Sixty Special maybe?

Its black coat shined as the moonlight casted a gentle shadow upon it.

You swiftly got up and exited the house, kissing your mother goodbye on the way.

The woman from earlier was in the driver’s seat.

“You made it,” she said with the same silky tone from earlier.

“Uh...yeah,” you said, clutching your pure strap, “Yeah, I’m ready.”

She smiled and nudged her head towards the back, signaling you to get in.

You swiftly obeyed and soon you were riding into the night.

_

“So...how long y’all been working for these Udakus?”  You asked as the car drove with buttery ease.

The woman in the front passanger seat answered, “For a long time.”

“Okay...”

You briefly looked out the window and asked another question.

“Do you guys always fetch chefs from their houses or...?”

The woman laughed quietly, “You are quite curious, little one.”

You raised an eyebrow.

Little one...?

“That’s an interesting accent you got there?  Where y’all from?”

The first woman gave you answer, “A place far away from here.”

You were quiet after that.

_

Your mouth dropped at the black and white house that came into view.

Even though the moon and headlights were your only source of light, you could still spot its modern quality.

“Damn,” you mumbled.

The women laughed, “We get that a lot.”

They pulled in and the three of you got out.

That feeling of attraction from earlier now increased tenfold as you got closer to the door.

The door unlocked and slowly creaked open.

Holy.  Fucking.  Shit.

“Wow,” you commented, “Nice place.”

“We do the best we can,” the first woman said.

“I love the decor.”

“Then you shall make a fine fixture here,” the other answered.

“Now remember,” the first woman turned back to you, “Our employers are a bit strange but they are kind.  Don’t let them scare you.  Take a seat and relax.  They shall be out soon.”

You looked around, “Thanks gu-”

They were gone.

You huffed and sat on the plush roundabout.

What is it with these people and disappearing?

_

You waited for what felt like hours.

Looking at your clock, you saw the time.

9:45 pm.

Huffing, you laid back and prepared to text your mom that she was right.

This was a dumb idea.

“Nice work (Y/N),” you grumbled to yourself, “You’re in a house owned by some rich ass white folks who you don’t know.  And they are clearly too rich and occupied for you.  Who do they think they are - Will and Grace?”

“Not exactly.”

You gasped and sprung up, whipping around quickly.

The woman standing there was the most beautiful woman you had ever seen.

She was dark-skinned, with an hourglass figure that would make any model weep.

Her bright red dress showed perfectly under the light of the chandelier.

Her hair was shaven with dark curls atop her head and her eyes...

They were red.

“You must be the chef my girls brought me,” she said, her tongue beckoning you with an African accent you couldn’t place, “I am pleased.  They chose well.”

“Oh uh...thank you.  Forgve my rambling please.  I’m usually not that rude-”

You gasped when the woman quickly pulled your extended hand to her with lightning reflexes.

“It is already forgotten,” she said, her honeyed voice filling your ears.

She held your hand an inch away from your nose and took a big sniff.

Her eyes brightened, “You have a lovely scent.”

“Um...thanks, it’s my mom’s perfume.  I wanted to make a good impression.”

She nodded and let your hand go, “Come.  It is time for your interview to start.”

“Yes ma’am.  I have my resume-”

“That won’t be necessary.  All I need is your name.”

“(Y/N), (Y/N) (Y/M/N) (Y/L/N).  And you are?”

“I am called Nakia.  My two girls who brought you here are Okoye and Ayo.”

“Those are pretty names.”

“If you manage to impress me, then you might learn where they come from.”

Nakia walked you into a large kitchen.

The cabinets were pure oak, the fridge was stainless steel and the island was marble.

She sat down, “Cook for me.”

“What do you want me to make?”

She smiled at you, “Anything you want.”

You quietly sat your purse down and got to work.

You fished out all the dished and ingredients and whipped up one of your favorite recipes.

Nakia watched you interested intent.

You boiled the rice and fried the shrimp.

You sautéed the peppers and onions to perfection before taking them and the shrimp and setting them on top of the Basmatti.

You then set the bowl in front of Nakia along with a glass of wine and handed her a fork.

“Bon appétit,” you said, standing back, “Enjoy.”

Nakia nodded and ate.

Her face was expressionless for most of the meal and when she was done, she smiled at you.

“You’re hired.”

Your eyes bugged out of your head.

“Really?!”

“Mhmm.”

“Oh ma’am thank you so much.  But...won’t hyour husband be upset that you hired me without his approval.”

“My husband is a hermet.  But despite that we are equals.  And trust me...”

Her smile widened.

“He will like you.”

____________

And that is all for now my lovelies!  Hope you stay tuned for the next part.  Please feel free to tell me if I should just delete this.  I’ve been throwing this idea around for a while now...

@macfizzle  @wakanda-inspired  @bribrisback  @kumkaniudaku  @black-is-beautiful18  @weasleyginerva @kissesbooboo @supersizemeplz @chaneajoyyy @dreamingoftchalla  @lavitabella87  @pastelpanda19  @chocolatemonkeyrainbows @blackreaders-assemble @blackmissfrizzle  @laketaj24 @eerythingisshaka @blackgirloneshots  @sisterwifeudaku  @destinio1  @pocmarvelworks  @black-mcu-imagines  @black-is-beautiful18  @inlovewithmakeupcomicsanimelove  @wakandalivesforever  @iwrite4poc  @siriuslycollins  @wakandas-vibranium  @100kindsofblake  @muse-of-mbaku  @naturally-bri  @helperofthenight  @dumbchick  @sweettea-and-honeybutter  @drsunshine97  @pastelastronomy24  @plussizeappreciationfics  @royallyprincesslilly  @afro-royalty  @tenaciousarcadeexpert  @shinyanchorface  @scarlettlullaby16 @hennessystevens-udaku @stark-red19 @marvelheaux @valynsia

[tombolaplayspop]

Tombola & The Californian Gurl, or, How Tombola Came to Love Katy Perry

Summer 2013. I was working for a private bank in London and the early days of my 10 year career at this illustrious bank was to drive the partners of the business wherever they pleased. This could be for a lunch meeting with a client or even a quick dash to a fancy dress shop in Soho for a last minute costume idea.

One warm Friday afternoon, I was called upon by my manager for an airport run to Heathrow. I jumped to the chance as he offered the company car to me for the whole weekend and an early finish. I was always prepared for this kind of task as I held in my locker a folder with a dozen CD’s inside. So with some tunes in hand, I rolled up my sleeves, headed towards the car park and awaited my passenger. My journey to the airport was insanely quiet inside the car as passenger read his newspaper whilst I manoeuvred around the London traffic with majestic ease. Once at the destination, my passenger vacated the car, collected his luggage from the boot and was on his merry way.

Now, the fun would begin.

With an estimated 90 minute journey back to Essex ahead of me, I had a fully air conditioned car and a selection of tunes. But what to choose? I flicked through various artists such as Van Halen, Michael Jackson and P!nk but settled for someone I never quite saw eye to eye with musically; Katy Perry.

Let’s zip back five years prior to late 2008.

Katy Perry made waves with the single, I Kissed a Girl from her debut album One of the Boys. Ok, it was cheeky little ditty, but rather annoying. The initial “ooh la la” of Perry’s risqué lyrics did not stick with me in the long run as underneath the sauce, which was spread insanely thick, was a rather bland tune. The follow up, Hot ‘n’ Cold was a far better track in my opinion as it was jaunty and frivolous.With this in mind I decided to attend her 2009 Hello Katy world tour at Koko in London. And to this day, it is the worst gig I have ever attended. Where do I start? Her vocals were appalling, she spoke far too much between tracks and I was left incredibly dissatisfied. Because of this, my view of Perry was tarnished.

Scooting back to my journey home from Heathrow, whilst flicking through my CD folder, there she was, sprawled naked over a pink fluffy cloud gazing at me with her big doe eyes from the cover of her updated sophomore album, Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection. Now, as singles go, this album has three crackers; the nostalgic Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F), the sexually charged title track and the sickeningly sweet California Gurls. So, why not finally get round to listening to the whole thing.

Disclaimer, I used to buy a LOT of albums and never actually listen to them all the way through. Oh how that changed as I matured.

What I experienced on the way home was something quite outstanding. I actually enjoyed almost all of what I heard (ok, Firework is still one of those overplayed anthems that fills me with blaaaaagh), but as I pulled up at home I had a grin on my face and felt joyful for experiencing some new tunes. Later that year she released album number three, Prism. Being a compulsory purchaser of albums before I’ve heard them, I picked it up. I remember there being a free gift too; some seeds... don’t ask.

So what happened next? I didn’t even pop it in my CD player. The first three singles did not do anything for me. Roar was another bland anthem, Unconditionally was bore-off and Dark Horse was emotionless. Because of this, I switched off from anything else she released, which coincidentally, was the biggest mistake I’ve made (more on that later).

By the time 2017 rolled around, there were a slew of pop stars of the 2010’s all making waves such as Bieber, GaGa, Swift and Drake. All trying new things to stay relevant. Perry just didn’t fit in for me. I made a statement that she even tried to mimic her one time frenemy, Miley Cyrus, but chopping her locks off and opting for the pixie cut. I just wasn’t buying it.

Then something incredible happened. I became a father to two beautiful girls called Dottie and Roxie. Our favourite pastime is to pop YouTube on and dance around to music videos. Just like I did in the 90s with my dad and MTV. I started off by sharing the most bubblegum infused pop I could think of, the likes of Little Mix, Taylor Swift and the Spice Girls before dipping in to the past and showing them classics like Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer.

Now, you know how YouTube works, once a song finishes it finds something similar. It started to play Katy Perry. One track of hers in particular that my eldest calls “No Big Deal”. I’m talking about This Is How We Do, the fourth single from her third album that I had boyed off after single number three failed me! This track is everything; it’s catchy, it’s fun and you can dance along to it. More importantly, both of my daughters ask for it and are mesmerised by the dazzling video that accompanies it. Afterwards, we watched Birthday, the fifth single from the album which is the sweetest track ever. Then comes Chained to the Rhythm, Swish Swish and then back to the stuff I loved such as T.G.I.F.

My daughters lapped up the crazy side of Perry that I mistook for a desperate attempt at fitting in, shame on me. For I have judged when I just couldn’t get it until I saw both my daughters reactions and how happy it makes them. So, Katy, after all these years, I am sorry for shunning your creativity and glorious music. I now look forward to what you’ll produce next so I can play it to my girls. Thank you.

[kitsune-kirei]

TW: Self harm, suicide, manipulation, ect.

Recently I’ve seen some posts going around that have been affecting me heavily as an individual, posts that have triggered some very unpleasant memories. I felt like it would be wrong of me to just sit back and let these posts affect people I know without saying anything, without sharing my experiences.

I think there is something important we should discuss, especially in an online community.

I want to talk about how to distinguish if someone has survived a suicide attempt, VS someone fabricating suicide as a manipulation tactic. 

( Edit: I am not making this post as an excuse to call someone out on fabricating crisis. I am making this post to open the discussion about manipulative behavior. Never accuse someone of lying or fabricating a self harm story. And please read everything before jumping to conclusions. This text post is very long, and if you skim you will miss very, very important points and nuances to my words.)

I debated for a while if I should even post this, and asked for the opinion of multiple people. The last thing I want to do is trigger anyone who’s going through self harming thoughts and feelings, or sound like I’m trivializing a topic as serious as suicide. Though after seeing some of my friends affected by the topic of this post, and feeling manipulated myself; I decided I would post about my own experiences, to help people distinguish if they are being manipulated with self harm.  I’m motivated to write this because of the lack of information about what happens if someone survives a suicide attempt, especially if its involving a person you know through online interactions.

I think its very important to have a discussion about, especially with how serious of a topic suicide and self harm is, and how easy it is to fabricate a self harm story and manipulate online. I’ve seen and heard of suicide being used as a manipulation tactic in RP communities especially.

I want to start off with saying, its all right to seek attention if you’re suicidal. Its all right to reach out to friends and people who care about you. If a tumblr blog is all you have to reach out to others, then its okay to ask for help publicly. Don’t ever feel guilty about reaching out to others if you need help. I cannot stress this enough. ‘Seeking attention’ has such a negative connotation behind it, and we need to change our mindset about these two words when they’re put together. 

Below, I’ve put some numbers to multiple suicide hotlines across the world. Call them if you have no other option for relief. Its not shameful, it’s self care, especially if you don’t have anyone around, and you feel so bad and far gone that you might hurt yourself.  

USA Suicide Hotline: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

European Suicide Hotline: https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/Europe/

Australian Suicide Hotline: https://www.gogentleaustralia.org.au/suicide_help

Asian Suicide Hotline: http://suicideprevention.wikia.com/wiki/Asia

I sincerely hope that if you have self harming thoughts, you’ll take care of yourself and reach out to people you can trust. Either close friends, or one of the numbers provided above.

Again, I cannot stress enough, if you feel like self harming or ending your life, PLEASE SEEK HELP AND REACH OUT TO TRUSTED INDIVIDUALS.

With that made clear, I’m going to I’m going to talk about some signs to tell if someone is manipulating you by sensationalizing a suicide attempt online.

_________________________________________

I really didn’t want to get personal with my own experiences... And even now I have a side that feels very ashamed that I’m talking about this so openly and posting it publicly. I realize though, that I have to provide some sort of backup to what I’m about to say, if I want to try to educate others about the topic at hand.

I’ve attempted on my own life twice now. I’ve been admitted to hospitals, and day programs where we weren’t allowed to leave until they knew we were better. I’ve made friends from these programs that have also attempted on their life multiple times.  I’m not saying this to gain sympathy, I’m saying this because I’ve experienced first hand what an attempt is like, from both sides. I’ll be taking from my personal experiences and some of my friends that were lucky enough to survive their own attempts.

Disclaimer:  I am no expert when it comes to this topic, and I’m not claiming to be. I can only provide my own experiences for help. 

Also, these points will be written from the perspective through the internet, and not face to face.

EDIT: These points are also made from the perspective as an USA citizen. I cannot speak about experiences from other countries, like Europe, or Asia. Your experiences will differ based on Country, or the state you live in.

Again, please seek professional help if suicide and self harm has been a constant throughout in your life.

Below are the points I’ve written up from my own experiences what happens when someone attempts suicide, and red flags to look out for if you suspect you’re being manipulated online.

1. The biggest red flag that you could possibly get that someone is sensationalizing a suicide attempt, is if they have access to a mobile phone or a computer only a few hours after they said they were going through with suicide. Anyone who’s survived a legitimate suicide attempt, and found, will most likely be admitted into a hospital, and ALL ELECTRONICS WILL BE CONFISCATED, for days or weeks depending on how severe the attempt was. They will NOT let you have internet access, and you will lose contact with this person for days, sometimes weeks if the hospital finds physical proof that they tried to end their life. The hospital takes multiple blood tests to see if you have any abnormal amounts of drugs in your system, and check your body thoroughly for any cuts or bruises.

Again, HOSPITALS DO NOT GIVE YOU PHONE / INTERNET ACCESS DURING THIS TIME. YOU LOSE YOUR RIGHTS WHEN YOU ATTEMPT SUICIDE, AND ARE FORCED TO STAY IN THE HOSPITAL OR PSYCHIATRIC WARD UNTIL YOUR MENTAL HEALTH IS DEEMED STABLE. ABSOLUTELY NO EXCEPTIONS.  This process can sometimes take weeks or months depending on how severe your mental state is. The reason you lose your phone and internet access is because they don’t want you to get triggered from anything you can potentially see online, or talk to people that could make your situation and mental state worse. If nothing was found in their blood tests, no outwardly self harm injuries are found, and their mental state is deemed safe enough for them to be alone, their phones and rights are given back and they are released from the hospital. 

If someone is online or on their phone right after a supposed suicide attempt, its almost guaranteed that they’re sensationalizing.

(Edit: Your experience on this will differ based on where you live. Example: Its been brought to my attention that the UK will not do this in most cases. Though from my knowledge, most US states confiscate your phones. Not all, but most.)

2. They provide too much information. If they give you a very detailed run down on their situation and exactly everything that’s going on, they’re probably lying. There’s an excerpt perfectly explaining this from an article here:

"When someone goes on and on and gives you too much information — information that is not requested and especially an excess of details — there is a very high probability that he or she is not telling you the truth," wrote Glass. "Liars often talk a lot because they are hoping that, with all their talking and seeming openness, others will believe them."

If you see the person in question online, and they’re posting about their suicide experiences with a run down about every single thing that’s going on, (doctor visits, medications they might be receiving, mental evaluations being performed), its a sign that they’re sensationalizing the situation, especially if its a play by play, or if they’re posting about it as soon as its happening.

3. They post publicly about their attempt in detail and in excess. I’ve never met, or experienced anyone who’s attempted suicide, that wants to broadcast their attempt publicly. When you fail an attempt, you try to distance yourself from the attempt as much as possible, and will probably only speak about it to people who are very close to you, if you even choose to speak about it. The feelings that come after are failed attempt are HUGE waves of guilt, shame, and regret. You especially feel guilty about the people you’ve worried, and hurt with an attempt. (I cannot stress how hurt the people close to you get after you attempt suicide.)

People are (usually) very apologetic and self loathing/deprecating after trying to take a step as drastic as self harm. They’re ashamed, withdrawn, and very quiet, especially when it comes to the topic of their attempt. Attempting suicide is one of the most traumatic experiences you can go through, and most are very unwilling to go into detail about how they attempted, or what happened after. The last thing you would want is for you actions to be broadcasted publicly. If someone is publicly posting their experiences after a supposed attempt, their motivations are probably to gain attention from someone specific, or multiple people. It doesn’t have to be, but its most likely the case. 

(On a side note, I’ve seen public apology letters being posted online from people who have attempted. These apologies and letters are not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about when the topic of someone’s suicide attempt is brought up over and over, post after post in detail.)

Edit: This point above is talking about when someone posts about their suicide publicly right after their attempt. It is possible that someone who has actually survived an attempt to start to post online about it, but in my experience, its very easy to tell the difference between someone trying to manipulate a situation to gain sympathy, compared to someone who is posting because they’re seeking help / comfort / don’t know how else to cope. THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE WHEN SOMEONE ACTS ON ANXIETY, AND WHEN SOMEONE IS ACTING ON THE NEED TO MANIPULATE AND SKEW A SITUATION, or to manipulate sympathy from others. Anxiety tends to feel frantic and desperate, manipulation is calm, collected and thought out. This is not true for every single case on self harm, but it usually is in my experience.

4. They show no signs of remorse. A little bit of what I talked about above relates to this point. If you see little, to no signs of remorse or regret for an attempted suicide, they’re most likely using it in a manipulative way. (Edit: I want to make it clear what I mean by no remorse. If someone seems cheerful, proud, or even smug about their suicide attempt, its a red flag. People who have actually survived an attempt can also emotionless, or feeling ‘dead’on the inside afterwards. Not everyone who has attempted will feel sorry for what they did, but it usually will be coupled with ill feelings about them self or the situation.)

5. They try to guilt trip, shame, or use their suicide attempt as an excuse for someone to stay in their life, or to gain more attention/time from a person. This is a touchy subject, especially since you are absolutely not in the right state of mind when you survive an attempt. But it is still a red flag if someone uses their attempt at their life to guilt, or scare someone into feeling like they need to stick around. If you find yourself in this situation, please know that it is not your job to pick this person back up and make them feel better. Distance yourself from toxic behavior if you must. (Edit: I also want to make this clear, people who are under extreme spells of anxiety and franticness can start saying things along the lines of guilt tripping, but there is a huge difference when someone does this frantically and desperately form a hightened state of emotion, vs someone making calculated ultimatums). 

Edit - Other red flags to look out for (Again, your experience might differ depending on the situation)-

They suddenly backpedal from their claims as soon as you provide options for professional help.

They leave a suicide note that is passive aggressive, aggressive, guilt tripping, or done with an air of spite.

They claim they were in drastic circumstances (Ex: ‘I was passed out after what I did’, ‘I took a lot of drugs’, ‘my stomach was pumped’, ‘I died for a moment and they had to bring me back to life’) ; And then they claim they were released from the hospital only after a day or a few hours. If this person is released from the hospital only a few days after such a heavy claim, its almost guaranteed they’re lying. If a suicide attempt was as serious as these claims, you are kept inside the hospital for a lot longer than just a few hours or a day, without access to the internet or a phone. (Especially in US states, I can’t say the same for places like the UK). 

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These five are the biggest red flags that someone is sensationalizing a suicide attempt. Of course, there are so many other points, and different factors when someone tries to take their life, especially since no experience is the same... But these points are commonly found in cases where someone is fabricating a suicide for manipulation.

I also want to stress these points:

Manipulation, and seeking attention are two different things. Seeking attention is often done because someone needs help, and the person doesn’t know how to properly ask for the help they need. Manipulation is a form if emotional abuse, and is primarily done to force someone to feel a certain way with guilt or by demeaning them; or to try to gain attention from someone that has cut them out of their life, to force someone to stay, ect.

What happens in the hospital during treatment is not pleasant, by any means. Usually the hospital is a huge source of trauma after someone survives a suicide attempt. You’re usually put in isolation in a room by yourself, and housed with others who are having their own mental heath issues in rooms close by. Here’s an article that details one story out of many traumatic incidents that happen inside the ward where they keep individuals who cannot be trusted to be alone without hurting themselves, or others. (Warning, its graphic.) https://www.omicsonline.org/suicide-attempt-after-deliberate-self-poisoning-in-the-icu-2155-6148.1000284.php?aid=11686

If you suspect someone is fabricating a suicide, do not under any circumstances, accuse them of lying. 

Again, for the people in the back: 

IF YOU SUSPECT SOMEONE IS FABRICATING A SUICIDE, DO. NOT. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. ACCUSE THEM OF LYING.

I am not making this post as an excuse for you to call out someone on suspected fabrication. DO NOT DO THIS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. 

It makes you look like the villain, and you might push the person into actually trying a real attempt; or you will accidentally shame someone who really has tried to take their life. Act with compassion, patience, logic, and understanding, for them and yourself. If you want to offer them support, provide helpful links and encourage them to seek extra, professional help, and stay away from the topic of their supposed suicide as much as possible. Cutting off a person is entirely an option as well. When someone is showcasing toxic behavior, it is not your job to make them feel comfortable. If you need to, take the steps to distance yourself from them as much as you need. Again, I am no expert in this topic, but these are the things that have been told to me, and things I’ve seen that help a situation like this.

Edit: If you are unsure of what to do in a situation that involves someone in crisis, please seek professional help. Any incorrect actions you take can push someone to take their life. Be careful, be cautious. Again, do not accuse anyone of lying about self harm.  

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I’m  sorry if this post was triggering in any way... And I’m sorry if it was a difficult and uncomfortable read. I couldn’t just sit by any longer without saying something on the matter, especially since I see similar situations happen so often in RP communities. I really hope that I was able to provide some insight on the topic, so others who haven’t experienced this can tell when they’re being manipulated. 

Edit: I want to make it clear that I do not want my post to be taken as ‘gospel’, or my words as the only things that happen after a suicide attempt. This post is only supposed to remind people to be mindful and aware if they feel they are being manipulated, not taken as fact, or ‘if this person is doing these things, they are for sure faking it’. There are so many nuances and different situations when it comes to this topic, and if I were to try to address all of them, this post will be as long as a novel or two.

Please, stay safe friends. And use your better judgement. If your gut is telling you something isn’t right, its usually correct. 

[ashtray-girl]

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept and its role in Morrissey’s lyricism

PLOT This is a short prose poetry novel in which author Elizabeth Smart recounts her love affair with married poet George Barker (even though she began writing it years before they met). Said affair lasted 18 years and she bore 4 of his 15 children, whom he had from several different women.

The novel is divided in 10 parts, so I’ll proceed by summing up each one of them while also highlighting the parts which I think are relevant to the Morrissey discourse.

DISCLAIMER: even though there isn’t much of a plot to spoil (the focus is placed almost entirely on the narrator’s feelings and in the way they’re expressed), I am gonna quote extensively from every chapter so keep that in mind if you intend to read the book for yourself.

PART I The protagonist is waiting at the bust station for the man she loves to collect her (she never names him btw) but when he finally comes he’s with his wife and it’s her that the protagonist sees first.

“But then it is her eyes that come forward out of the vulgar disembarkers to reassure me that the bus has not disgorged disaster: her madonna eyes, soft as the newly-born, trusting as the untempted. And, for a moment, at that gaze, I am happy to forego my future, and postpone indefinitely the miracle hanging fire. […] Behind her he for whom I have waited for so long, who has stalked so unbearably through my nightly dreams.”

It’s interesting to note the way she talks about her. Even though she’s wildly in love with this man, she never badmouths her. On the contrary, throughout the story she seems to have a good opinion of her.

“I see she can walk across the leering world and suffer injury only from the ones she loves. But I love her and her silence is propaganda for sainthood.”

You know what all of this reminds me of? The time Angie collected Morrissey at the station to take him to Johnny’s house, a few days after Johnny had knocked on Morrissey’s door and they’d talked about forming a band. Did he expect it would be Johnny who’d come and pick him up? Did he know he had a girlfriend?

“So we drive along the Californian coast singing together, and I entirely renounce him for only her peace of mind.”

I don’t know if the narrator shares Morrissey’s fascination with cars (I don’t even think the two things are necessarily related), but it’s worth pointing out how some of the most important and dramatic scenes of the book happen in a car.

“Why do I not jump off this cliff where I lie sickened by the moon? I know these days are offering me only murder for my future. It is not just the creeping fingers of the cold that dissuade me from action, and allow me to accept the hypocritical hope that there may be some solution. Like Macbeth, I keep remembering that I am their host. So it’s tomorrow’s breakfast rather than the future’s blood that dictates fatal forbearance. Nature, perpetual whore, distracts with the immediate.”

Look at this entire paragraph and tell me it isn’t the most Morrissey thing you’ve ever read. Also, does any part of it sound familiar? Well, let’s look at the lyrics for Shakespeare’s Sister:

Young bones groan, and the rocks below say “Throw your skinny body down, son"

But I'm going to meet the one I love So please don't stand in my way Because I'm going to meet the one I love No, mama, let me go

Young bones groan and the rocks below say "Throw your white body down"

But I'm going to meet the one I love At last, at last, at last! I'm going to meet the one I love

Then the protagonist gets to the couple’s house and her sudden proximity to the man she loves brings the feelings she’s been trying to repress right back to the surface:

“The Beginning lurks uncomfortably on the outskirts of the circle, like an unpopular person whom ignoring can keep away. The very silence, the very avoiding of any intimacy between us, when he, when he was only a word, was able to cause me sleepless nights and shivers of intimation, is the more dangerous. Our seeming detachment gathers strength. I sit back impersonally and say, I see human vanity, or feel myself full of gladness because there is a gentleness between him and her, or even feel irritation because he lets her do too much of the work, sits lolling whilst she chops wood for the stove.”

There’s an unmistakable feeling of impeding doom, as if she knows that even though nothing physical has happened between them yet, she’s sealed her own deal just by being there with him and it’s only a matter of time before the inevitable strikes.

“While we drive along the road in the evening, talking as impersonally as a radio discussion, he tells me: ‘A boy with green eyes and long lashes, whom I had never seen before, took me into the back of a printshop and made love to me, and for two weeks I went around remembering the numbers on bus conductors’ hats.’ ‘One should love beings whatever their sex’, I reply, but withdraw into the dark with my obstreperous shape of shame, offended with my own flesh which cannot metamorphose into a printshop boy with armpits like chalices.”

So there you have it: Meaningful Car Scene n°1. He confesses he had a homosexual experience (and he enjoyed it, or so it seems) and she’s jealous but not outraged or disgusted, which is quite a big deal if you think this book was first published in 1945. (It’s also worth noting that, in her later years, Elizabeth Smart had affairs with both men and women). Another thing I noticed as I was writing this is that sentence, “remembering the numbers on bus conductors’ hats”, which reminded me of that line in Phoney:

Who can make Hitler Seem like a bus conductor? You do, oh Phoney you do

It’s probably just a coincidence, but I found it funny nonetheless.

“He kissed my forehead driving along the coast in the evening, and now, wherever I go, like the sword of Damocles, that greater never-to-be-given kiss hangs above my doomed head. He took my hand between the two shabby front seats of the Ford, and it was dark, and I was looking the other way, but now that hand casts everywhere an octopus shadow from which I can never escape. The tremendous gentleness of that moment smothers me under; […] I stand on the edge of the cliff, but the future is already done.”

Meaningful Car Scene n°2. There’s a first attempt at physical contact and by now he seems to have realised she has feelings for him, so he’s trying to see how far he can push himself with her.

Now, I’m just gonna go ahead and say it: I feel like something very similar to this may have happened between Johnny and Morrissey. The reason why I decided to write this analysis is because, once I read the book, I fully realised the pervasiveness of its influence in many of the lyrics Morrissey wrote while he was in The Smiths (especially during the Meat Is Murder era) and in the first years of his solo career but, as much as people talked about it, I feel like they never went deep enough. The way I see it, Morrissey had every reason to relate to the protagonist, even though she’s a woman. Someone who falls deeply in love with a married man (with bisexual tendencies, it seems) and is quite concerned with the ethics of what she’s doing but at the same time is very certain of her feelings for him. The man, on the other hand, seems to have a much more ambiguous attitude, accepting her love but also wanting to keep a respectable façade by staying with his wife. If we assume that Morrissey did harbour romantic feelings for Johnny, it’s easy to see why he would choose this book as a way to sublimate them, especially if we consider how the queer factor would’ve made them even less acceptable in the eyes of society.

But going back to the book… what about the man’s wife?

“By day she obeys the voice of love as the stricken obey their god, and she walks with the light step of hope which only the naive and the saints know. […] He also is bent towards her in an attitude of solicitude. Can he hear his own heart while he listens for the tenderness of her sensibilities? Is there a way at all to avoid offending the lamb of god?”

As I said before, she doesn’t seem to be especially jealous of his wife, but that may be because at the moment she’s high on the secret attentions her husband is giving her, so it’s easy for her to feel sorry for this other woman who’s being cheated on right under her own roof.

I can’t help but think about how Morrissey and Angie had their own relationship and seemed to be quite close. I mean, that must have been a bit of a weird dynamic (for Moz at least), and I wonder how they worked it out.

“I never was in love with death before, nor felt grateful because the rocks below could promise certain death. But now the idea of dying violently becomes an act wrapped in attractive melancholy, and displayed with every blandishment. For there is no beauty in denying love, except perhaps by death, and towards love what way is there? To deny love, and deceive it meanly by pretending that what is unconsummated remains eternal, or that love sublimated reaches highest to heavenly love, is repulsive, as the hypocrite’s face is repulsive when placed too near the truth. […] I might be better fooled, but can I see the light of a match while burning in the arms of the sun?”

There’s another reference to dying by throwing herself off a cliff, but the really interesting part is what comes after. The narrator rejects the idea that spiritual love is the highest form of love, which is achieved by embracing its physical side instead. It’s not enough for her to have a platonic bond with the man she loves because she wants him in mind, body and soul.

While reading this, I couldn’t help but draw some parallels:

- “Dying violently becomes an act wrapped in attractive melancholy.” → “To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die.” - “Can I see the light of a match while burning in the arms of the sun?” → “There is a light and it never goes out.”

And then, opening the penultimate paragraph of this first chapter:

“I have learned to smoke because I need something to hold on to. I dare not be without a cigarette in my hand.”

This is one of the most obvious one. If we look at the lyrics for What She Said (which is based almost entirely on this book), it’s pretty self-explanatory:

What she said: ‘I smoke ‘cause I’m hoping for a nearly death And I need to cling to something.’

PART II This part is mainly about the remorse the protagonist is feeling towards the man’s wife, who has now realised something happened between the two of them.

“Her eyes pierced all the veils that protected my imagination against ruinous knowledge. […] Is there no other channel of my deliverance except by her martyrdom?”

It’s quite interesting to note how the chapter opens with:

“God, come down […] and tell me who will drown in so much blood.”

And then, on the next page:

“I am blind, but blood, not love, blinded my eye. Love lifted the weapon but guided my crime.”

Both of these lines reminded me of the lyrics for Yes, I Am Blind:

Yes, I am blind No, I can't see The good things Just the bad things, oh...

Yes, I am blind No, I can't see There must be something Horribly wrong with me?

God, come down If you're really there Well, you're the one who claims to care

It then goes on:

“… she whom I have injured, and whose agony it is my penalty to watch, lies gasping, but still living, on the land.”

- “Gasping, but still living.” → “Gasping, but somehow still alive.” (Well I Wonder)

PART III The narrator spends most of this chapter gushing about how in love she is with this man, who in the meantime has followed her back home to spend some time with her (though it’s not clear whether he has left his wife for her or not.)

“Even the precise geometry of his hand, when I gaze at it, dissolves me into water and I flow away in a flood of love.”

(I have nothing to say about this line except that I like it and that I can’t help but imagine Morrissey staring at Johnny’s hands as he picks the chords of his guitar, thinking these exact same thoughts.)

“When the Ford rattles up to the door, five minutes (five years) late, and he walks across the lawn under the pepper-trees, I stand behind the gauze curtains, unable to move to meet him, or to speak, as I turn to liquid to invade his every orifice when he opens the door.”

Yet another reference to his car. Also yeah, you’re wet for him, we get it.

“And there is so much for me, I am suddenly so rich, and I have done nothing to deserve it, to be so overloaded. All after such a desert. All after I had learnt to say, I am nothing, and I deserve nothing. […] It has happened, the miracle has arrived, everything begins today, […] all the paraphernalia of existence, all my sad companions of these last twenty years, […] all the world solicits me with joy, leaps at me electrically, claiming its birth at last.”

I can’t help but think about how similarly Morrissey must have felt after Johnny knocked on his door, after having spent his last twenty years in much the same way the narrator had, feeling lonely and isolated.

I mean, he even said so himself:

“He appeared at a time when I was deeper than the depths, if you like. And he provided me with this massive energy boost. I could feel Johnny’s energy just seething inside of me.”

“I was there, dying, and he rescued me.”

The chapter ends with this sentence:

“Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm, for love is strong as death.”

Which kinda reminds me of that part in Rusholme Ruffians:

So scratch my name on your arm with a fountain pen (This means you really love me)

PART IV This is, in my opinion, the book’s most interesting chapter. What happens is, they get stopped as they’re crossing the Arizona border and once the cops realise they’re together but not married to each other, the take them to the police station, interrogate them for several hours about the nature of their relationship and then make them leave separately.

Once again, one of the most dramatic scenes takes place in a car.

I fully believe that Morrissey wrote both The Boy With The Thorn In His Side and later Late Night, Maudlin Street with this entire part in mind.

“They are taking me away in a police car […] They are prosecuting me for silence and for love […] They drove me away in a police car. […] For too much love, only for too much love. […] Are you not convinced, inspector? Do you not believe in love?”→ “They took you away in a police car / Inspector – don’t you know? Don’t you care? Don’t you know – about love?” (Late Night, Maudlin Street)

“They intercepted our love because of what was in our eyes. […] Did they see such flagrant proof and still not believe?” → “How can they see the love in our eyes and still they don’t believe us?” (The Boy With The Thorn In His Side)

I wonder who “they” were, though. I mean, we know that in the book, when she says: “They are prosecuting me for silence and for love” she clearly means the authorities, but what did Morrissey mean? Were “they” those same “people who are weaker/uglier than you and I” and those “evil people (who) prosper over the likes of you and me always”? And did he have some specific names in mind, or did he just mean society in general? As in: “They (the general public / the media / the music industry) can’t (don’t want to?) see we love each other because they’re not ready to accept that idea yet, but they’re more than happy to profit from us and our art, which is only made possible BECAUSE of that love.”

The penultimate paragraph before the end of the chapter feels especially relevant:

“All our wishes were private, we desired no more scope than ourselves. Could we corrupt the young by gazing into each other’s eyes? Would they leave their offices? Would big business suffer?”

PART V The protagonist comes back home feeling sorry for herself. Her family doesn’t approve of her relationship with a married man, but she refuses to apologise and spends most of her time contemplating nature and reminiscing about what happened.

Another quote which Morrissey probably used as inspiration for Late Night…

“Every yellow or scarlet leaf hangs like a flag waving me on.” → “Every hag waves me on / Secretly wishing me gone.”

PART VI The protagonist has an argument with her father, who’s worried about her state. Her mother doesn’t want to have anything to do with her anymore and even her brother is sceptical about the whole situation. She then reminisces about leaving Ottawa with him (she’s Canadian) and she talks at length about how they’re meant to be together no matter what. She also finds out she’s pregnant.

At the start, she mentions neighbours who warn her to stay away from him:

“The well-meaning matrons who, from their insulated living say, ‘My dear, I think you would would regret it afterwards if you broke up a marriage,’ ‘When you felt it about to happen the right thing would have been to have gone away at once.”

I wonder how many people around The Smiths were aware of Morrissey being in love with Johnny (because at this point, no one can convince me he wasn’t) and, if they were, how much did they know? Did they ever talked to him about it? Did they warn him about being cautious, about not revealing too much of his own feelings in his songs? And did they mention how bad it would look for him if he broke up a couple?

“The policeman grows fatter each day and rivals the new tanks. He blots out the doorway of the little café. A couple seeing him spills the milk at the counter, remembering what they did under the bridge last night. But the policeman is blind. He strikes only when he hears a loud noise. There are others, though, who have eyes like shifty hawks, and they prowl the streets searching for a face whereon an illegal kiss might be forming. No, there is no defence for love, and tears will only increase the crime.”

Here she’s talking about how, while in the midst of a war (the book is set in the 40s), the police (and society in general) seem to be concerned with futile things like arresting people who are doing nothing but love each other and it reminds me of a quote from Morrissey’s Autobiography:

“Men were draped with medals for killing other men yet imprisoned for loving one another.”

Later on, she makes a point of proclaiming herself ready to take their relationship as it is, without expecting much of a future.

“Though this is all there is […] I accept it without tomorrows and without any lilies of promise. It is enough, the now, and though it comes without anything, it gives me everything. […] But as long as the accessories are such now as to make me over-armed with weapons to combat the antagonistic world, even if a thousand programs go wrong, I won’t lament that past I was when I could see no future.”

She then tries to dissipate any doubts he might have about their relationship (because it looks as if he’s already starting to second-guess himself) by repeatedly reassuring him that she’s the one for him and that, as much as he tries, he can’t escape that fact.

“Remember I am not temptation to you, but everything is which inclines you away. Nor are you to me, but my entire goal. Sometimes you see this as clearly as I do now, for you say, ‘Do you think if I didn’t I could have…?’”.

I wonder… if Johnny hadn’t already been with Angie when he knocked on Morrissey’s door, would things have panned out differently for them? Would they have dared to take their relationship to the next level in spite of society’s backlash?

“Do you see me then as the too-successful one, like a colossus whose smug thighs rise obliviously out of sorrow? Or as the detestable all-female, who grabs and devours, invulnerable with greed? Alas, these are your sins, your garments of shame, and not the blond-sapling boys with blue eye-shadow leaning amorously towards you in the printshop.”

Leaving aside the fact that this man is garbage, she’s obviously anxious to reassure him that it’s not his bisexuality that saddens her, but the fact that he sees her as a threat.

Also that line, “grabs and devours”, will then be used by Morrissey in The Headmaster Ritual:

He grabs and devours He kicks me in the showers Kicks me in the showers And he grabs and devours

By the end of the chapter though, her words of comfort are starting to sound ominous:

“Only remember: I am not the ease, but the end. I am not to blind you but to find you. What you think is the sirens singing to lure you to your doom is only the voice of the inevitable, welcoming you after so long a wait. I was made only for you.”

PART VII The man has a breakdown and he’s interned in a psych facility. She tries to go and see him, but his wife is already there. He’d previously written her a letter, asking her to take him back. The protagonist leaves and when she comes back a few days later they leave together, but when she tries to confront him about the letter he refuses to listen to her. They have a fight and she ends up capitulating because he’s still ill and she wants to believe him when he tells her she’s the only one.

“My love, why did you leave me on Lexington Avenue in the Ford that had no breaks?” This line reminds me a bit of Break Up The Family, when Morrissey says:

Hailstones, driven home In a car – no breaks? I don’t mind

Which coincidentally is what’s happening in this chapter: the honeymoon phase is clearly over, he’s having troubles with his guilty conscience and he deals with them by distancing himself from her, even though she’s expecting his child.

PART VIII He and his wife move to London where the war is raging and, after a while, the protagonist follows them. She stays in a dingy hotel and he occasionally visits her to have sex with her, but by now it’s clear that he has no intention of leaving his wife for her, so they often fight and every day she’s getting more and more desperate and isolated.

The chapter opens with the line:

“His brother and his mother and his grandmother lie abandoned in death on the stones of the London Underground.”

This vaguely reminds me once again of Late Night…

You gran died And you mother died On Maudlin Street In pain and ashamed With never time to say Those special things

“Bombs are bigger, but the human brains they burst remain the same. It is the faces we once kissed that are being smashed in the English coastal towns, the hand we shook that are swept up with the debris […] and love still uproots the heart better than an imagined landmine.”

This paragraph makes me think of Ask:

Because if it’s not love Then it’s the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb The bomb, the bomb That will bring us together

In the meantime, their relationship is going sour and the protagonist feels they’re reaching a breaking point.

“When the ship cracks in the typhoon, we cover our heads and tell ourselves that all will resolve back to normal. But we are unbelieving. This time may not be like the other times that with time grew into cheerful anecdotes. […] O where does he stalk like a horse in pastures very far afield? I cannot hear him, and silence writes more terrible things than he can ever deny. Is there a suspicion the battle is lost? Certainly he killed me fourteen nights in succession.”

I can’t help but think about how Morrissey must have felt when Johnny told him he wanted to leave The Smiths. People around him (Stephen Street, Grant Showbiz) thought he was going to kill himself and the fact that Johnny then went on holiday and never made contact with him must have alarmed him even more. He’d first thought the situation could be repaired, but by then he must’ve realised the end was upon them.

“He did the one sin which Love will not allow. […] He did sin against Love, and though he says it was in Pity’s name, and that Pity was only fighting a losing battle with Love, he was useless to Pity, and in wavering, injured Love, which was, after all, what he staked all for, all he had, ungamblable.”

From what I gather, he went back to his wife because he felt sorry for her and the protagonist can’t accept that because in her eyes their love was everything that mattered and everything they had.

Now: as I said before, I think Morrissey was inspired by this book because he saw himself in it. I think he must’ve found many similarities between the protagonist’s situation and his own, both of them in love with a married man who doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself. Johnny and Angie split for a brief period in 1983, when The Smiths went on their first USA tour, and I’ve seen a few people speculate that if something physical happened between Morrissey and Johnny, it may very well have happened then. Morrissey may have taken advantage of the fact that Johnny was free and overcame his fears by making the first move. Or maybe, Johnny was the one who, once aware of Morrissey’s feelings for him, decided to take the bull by its horns. I don’t know. Nobody does. What I wonder is… once Johnny went back to Angie, how did Morrissey feel? Because I don’t think he was all that thrilled. Did he think he did it out of pity, like the protagonist of the book did? If something had happened between them on that tour, did he feel used? Did he feel mildly outraged? Did he resign himself to consider it a one-night stand and nothing more, even though his feelings for Johnny clearly went deeper than that? It’s also worth noticing how the references to this book start to spring up in his lyrics from Meat Is Murder onwards, that is, after that tour in 1983.

“How can I put love up to my hopes so suicidal and wild-eyed when the matter is too simple and too plain: it is her tears he feels trickling over his breast each night; it is for her he feels the concern; and the pity, after all, not the love, fills his twenty-four hours. Perhaps I am his hope. But then she is his present. And if then she is his present, I am not his present. Therefore, I am not, and I wonder why no one has noticed I am dead and taken the trouble to bury me. […] For even if he loves me, he is in her arms. O the fact, the unalterable fact: it is she he is with: he is with her: he is not with me because he is sleeping with her.”

For me, this might be the most heartbreaking part of the book. The protagonist knows that no matter what she tells herself, when he’s done with her he comes home to his wife while she’s stuck in a hotel room in a country which is not her own.

That line, “I wonder why no one has noticed I am dead and taken the trouble to bury me”, also crops up right at the beginning of What She Said:

What she said: “How come someone hasn’t noticed that I’m dead And decided to bury me? God knows, I’m ready!”

Which makes me think Morrissey must have somehow related to this part. “He loves me, but he’s still with her.” “He has martyred me, but for no cause, nor has he any idea of the size and consequence of my wounds. Perhaps he will never know, for to say, You killed me daily and O most especially nightly, would imply blame. I do not blame, nor even say, You might have done this or this rather than that. I even say, You must do that, you have to do it, there is no alternative, urging my own murder. […] If ever again he lets those nights happen, or dallies with remorse for past sins to others while sinning most dangerously against me, I shall be unrevivable. I shall, whether I want to or not, be struck dead with the fact. And he may clothe it in all humanity’s most melting colours, and pity, and sympathy, and call on love to be kind, and I too shall pray, Let me be kind, but it will be no good.”

This entire thing reinforces my first thought, which is: Morrissey and Johnny at one point had a one-night stand (“It was a good lay, good lay...”), except for Morrissey there were much stronger feelings attached to it.

As hurt as she is, the protagonist doesn’t blame the man for going back to his wife and she even encourages him, because she recognises that, at the end of the day, it’s the best course of action for everyone involved. What she wishes wouldn’t happen again are those nights, coupled with him badmouthing her to others out of remorse for his own actions.

If we once again consider the queer factor in the relationship between Morrissey and Johnny, it wouldn’t surprise me if Morrissey followed the same reasoning when Johnny went back to Angie because, as much as Morrissey loved him, he wouldn’t be able to give him the stability of a straight relationship. (That isn’t to say Johnny didn’t love Angie, btw. I’m sure he loved her deeply and he still does, but I also think at the time some internal conflict was present because, on some level, he reciprocated Morrissey’s feelings.)

That last line, “… and call on love to be kind, and I too shall pray, Let me be kind” reminds me of I Know It’s Over:

It takes strength to be gentle and kind

This can be applied to many situations, but I feel like it becomes especially relevant in the context of the love of your life leaving you for someone else, who you also care about.

PART IX The protagonist goes back home to Canada and has to face the invasive questioning of neighbours who see her with a big belly but no wedding ring. After a while though, she realises she must see the man she loves and so she leaves to meet him once again.

“I am lonely. I cannot be a female saint. I want the one I want. He is the one I picked out from the world. I picked him out in cold deliberation. But the passion was not cold. It kindled me. It kindled the world. Love, love, give my heart ease, put your arms round me, give my heart ease. Feel the little bastard.”

- “I want the one I want.” → “I want the one I can’t have.” - “Put your arms round me.” → “All I ask of you is one thing that you never do / Would you put your arms around me? (I won’t tell anyone).” (Tomorrow)

PART X The final chapter opens with the line that gave the book its title: “By Grand Central Station I sat down and wept.” He didn’t come to collect her, so she has a breakdown right in the middle of the station. The ending is kind of confusing. It looks as if she resigns herself to go back to him just to have sex with him, and she tries to convince herself everything is fine, but it clearly isn’t.

Elizabeth Smart went back to George Barker time and time again, even though their relationship was dysfunctional to say the least and they were both very damaged, egotistical individuals. He cheated on her repeatedly but she loved him nonetheless, so I guess it would make sense for the book to end like this as well.

“They obey the glint in the middle of my glazed eye, for it is the fierce last stand of all I have.” → “Gasping - but somehow still alive / This is the fierce last stand of all I am.” (Well I Wonder)

“I wanted only one thing. I gave you the full instructions. The name, I spelt it out in letters as long as a continent, even the address, the address that makes waterfalls of my blood because it is also her address. I said quite plainly and loudly: This is what I want. I want this, and I don’t want any bonus. Just give me this and I’ll pay any price you ask. I made no reservations. You took advantage of this. I never grudged. But, Sir, so what I plead is just – what are you stalling for? There is no more to give.”

This entire paragraph reminds me of Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want.

“He hangs, damp with his impotent tears, nailed by one hand to Love and by the other one to Pity.”

This man is split between love and duty and can’t seem to be able to make a decision, with everyone suffering as a consequence, including him. That’s what the protagonist sees. What I see is a man who likes to have his ego stroked and doesn’t mind a bit of drama. It’s not that he’s unable to make a decision, he just doesn’t want to.

“Is it possible he cannot hear me when he lies so close, so lightly asleep? […] My dear, my darling, do you hear me when you sleep?”

These parts were clearly used by Morrissey as inspiration for the lyrics of Well I Wonder (which, like What She Said, was based almost entirely on this book – I even think they were written back to back.)

Well I wonder Do you hear me when you sleep?

“This is the very room he chose instead of Love. Let it be quiet and full of healing. […] It is the cursed comfort he preferred to my breast. The one who shares it weeps silently in corners, is tender unnoticed, and makes his necessary tea. ‘Have you seen my notebook, dear?’ ‘It is under the desk, my sweet.’ Give it to him, O my gentle usurper, whom I also have usurped, my enemy whom I have both killed and been killed by. […] He also is drowning in the blood of too much sacrifice. Lay aside the weapons, love, for all battles are lost.”

At last he’s made his choice and if we’ve learned something from history it’s that a man’s comfort will always be more important than a woman’s safety and peace of mind.

FINAL COMMENTS As I said before, one of the reasons I think Morrissey was inspired by this book is that he found its story to be relatable, but it’s not just that. The language, as you may have noticed by reading some of its quotes, is quite poetic, abstract and melodramatic, with a major focus on introspection and an underlying sense of pervasive melancholy. This is an artistic quality that both Morrissey and Johnny had in common, even though they expressed it differently: one through his lyrics, the other through his sound. Ultimately, I think Morrissey found By Grand Central Station… very useful creatively and personally. Creatively because it gave him the inspiration to write some of his best songs (also, here’s a reminder that both Moz and Johnny declared Well I Wonder as one of their favourite Smiths’ songs at some point), and personally because it provided him with an outlet to confront his feelings for Johnny, which I think must have been quite tumultuous. With a shortage of LGBT media which was even more prevalent in the 80s, queer people often had to read between the lines of straight stories to find something to relate to, and I feel like that’s what Morrissey did. Personally, after reading it I found myself surprised by the superficiality with which most people (biographers, reviewers etc.) talked about its role in Morrissey’s lyrics, because clearly there’s so much more to it than stealing a line here and there. It’s also about him feeling invested in a story because it spoke to him and it represented him, at least partially, in an era when anyone who didn’t fit in with society’s standards of what it meant to be a man or a woman might as well not have existed at all.

[homestucky]

Davekat fic recs?

hrrmm wow i will have to think. ill probs just check my bookmarks which means i probably wont be able to think of many one chapter fics off the top of my head since i dont tend to bookmark them. also some that havent been updated in yrs i wont put here bcaus thats just frustrating unless theyre rlly notable and may come back i may not link them

also disclaimer that while im not super into smut so its unlikely im gonna recommend just porn fics, some may have some sexy times incidentally i suppose. also a lot of them are dave centric/dave POV bcaus hes my BOY

M.C. Escher that’s my favourite MC by Unda (COMPLETE)  is a wild ride and long but i recommend for sure, very well written n thought out. also check out the other fics in the series bcaus if i recall correctly there are some other shorter fics that unda wrote to give some background or develop characters. but theyre also really great even stand-alone! its finished now and i followed it the whole time :0. cw for child abuse and death 

Within, Without by reinkist (COMPLETE)  i actually read a long time ago so i dont remember it so well. i do remember thinking it was pretty great tho, so i do recommend it. i should probably go back for a reread some time. its just a really good meteor fic that explores everything you’d want it to, and does that well, u kno? its like the fic that u wanted to exist but couldnt find. but here it is!

Doc Scratch’s School for Supernaturally Gifted Adolescents by medical  (UNFINISHED AND RECENTLY UPDATED)is great, its like a multichapter magic/superhero au thing. its fun and characters in it are rlly well developed, like, i do enjoy a davekat fic which has a good and significant rose characterisation in there too. but theres some serious plot goin in in here too…. very exciting. 

To Be Taken Care Of by shitstuck  (COMPLETE)is good, its god some deep convos about troll v human culture and stuff, some rosemary too. bit of body horror but if i can handle it its not too bad. i just reread it lol. the epilogue changes the tone of things a bit n id be interested to know other peoples thoughts on that ;_;

Don’t Forget the Sun by Weevilo707 is rlly good but sadly NOT COMPLETE AND HASNT BEEN UPDATED IN AGES :@!! hope the authors doin ok  (EDIT: APPARENTLY the author is not planning on updating this one again, but i still think its a good read :^) )

Book Covers by turntechGeneticist717  (COMPLETE) is rlly great also!! big recommend. dave is lookin after a babby dirk as his big brother in college. i havent read it in a while but i remember when it was updating being like !!!!!!!!!!!Aaa!! also there are others in the series so take a look :)

The Truth is in the Eyes by AcrylicMist  (COMPLETE)is like a rlly mythological/fantasy interpretation of canon post game which is very cool????? like the world is sort of medieval or something but w the gods n magicky stuff. rlly interesting. , very dope again havent read it in a while and am running out of steam for ranting about fics but!! yea its sweet w an intriguing plot

The Eurydice Suite by callmearcturus  (COMPLETE) !!!!!!!!!!! i love this fic so much like its bonkers n i just. its like an inception sort of inspired au and i have NEVER watched inception but im just super into the concept. its just. a rlly amazing well written fic w perfect pacing and characterisation like the plot is like a beautiful spider web where time flicks back and forth yet makes perfect sense. theres such a sense of atmosphere. ive reread it so many times. also!!1111111 i love the dave in it, and i love the strilondes family relationsy stuff!! i also feel like it ties everything up rlly nicely despite having like all the main characters in it p much. hell yeaaaa. its my fav by this author whos an AMAZING writer like they just DROP U IN to the world with so much confidence and drop context and background in at a perfect pace so ur never confused but always intrigued. but often i find the atmosphere in their fics almost TOO intense u know?? like i feel like i wake up in a ditch after reading one like wh,,h who am i?? i hate using this word but the writing is weirdly like… “sensual” which i think means the writing is great, rlly strong atmosphere but im not  always 100% able to handle it. this one does not make me feel so dazed and its just.. yess

The Lucky Ones by daniomalley (COMPLETE) is another one i followed as it came out. a cool spacey au. sorry i cant think of anything else to say aaaa

Off Court by levvan (ON HIATUS?) is great tho strong themes of abuse from the start. not that none of the above have that if i havent said so uhhhh yea be wary of the tags i guess. but yes. 

three rounds and a sound by skitpost (UNFINISHED AND RECENTLY UPDATED) is rlly great, like a magic school au. very excited to see whats gonna happen next :0

We’re All Friends & Family Here (And Frankly, We’re Sick Of Your Shit) byLandOfMistAndSecrets (COMPLETE) is TECHNICALLY a dirkjake fic but it has very cute little pastiches of other characters and the DK ones are very cute and well characterised

An Alien and a DJ Walk into a Bar (and Accidentally Start a Relationship) by Kadaaver (APPEARS TO BE ON HIATUS) i was p into when it was still updating. theres not actually MUCH relationship stuff yet if i recall correctly but still. good. and i enjoy the characterisation of dave being p socially anxious.

turntechGodhead is offline by forestknifefight (UNFINISHED AND RECENTLY UPDATED) well relatively recently. i like this one a lot! theres some good beta kid friendship and some good karkat.

Astronomy in Reverse by PunkZucchini, sicklekind (ON HIATUS>??????) cute + features BIGKAT is i recall correctly

Bring You Down by acedavestrider (COMPLETE) idk what to say about this but thats not a criticism. its just a legit cute fic that is good for the heart. human au, earth n whatever. karkat is a student nurse!! yeaa! thats kind of incidental but i like it

Survival of the Richest by ireallyloveicecream (HIATUS???) theres not a lot of it but im so intrigued. some kind of a fae/magic fairy folk kinda thing

Californian Son by LivTC (COMPLETE BUT THERES MORE IN THE SERIES WHICH I HOPE WILL CONTINUE TO BE UPDATED ETC ETC) !! ok this one is kind of sexy n angsty and daves a REAL DICK in it but it rlly well written and i rlly wanna know more jijhihihu

First Contact by yesfir (UNFINISHED AND RECENTLY UPDATED) !! its au but like idk scifi, humans having to make a deal with/coexist with trolls. space colonies!! this one is great… good character development and plot… does that great thing of pacing the revelations of the plot rlly gradually so ur like ! somethings happening here and i must know more!!!

Feathered by AlloftheFandom  (UNFINISHED, RECENTLY UPDATED) this ones exciting :3 karkat has only just been introduced to it. its like a magicky world w a bit of mild body horror so far. some good strilondes also… has anyone noticed that i need strilonde family relations in a fic i love….

Soulmates by egossweetheart  (UNFINISHED (fairly..?) RECENTLY UPDATED) this is a souleater au which i dont know a lot about??? but its cool, i am suitably intrigued. bit of body horror. idk as always check the tags. idek why im bothering to specify that. anyways,

 Vladimir and Estragon Cope with Their Trauma by Volo (UNFINISHED RECENTLY UPDATED ETC) afterlife au. so yea TW death. im into it tho

The Importance of Being Karkat by choicescarfsylveon (UNFINISHED RECENTLY UPDATED ETC) karkat has a radioshow, dave is kind of a dick. some parts of that change. i wont spoil which. theres something deeper goin on too…….. mysterios….

anyways here are some fics that i think are cool. sorry it took ages i just wanted to give it a good effort ukno?? its not an exhaustive list but its what i found. thanks to all these authors and hey, while we’re at it, all fanfic authors!! good work and i hope u all know how appreciated it is. anyways i have a headache so i guess ill finish this up. peace!

[theycallmebeccawrites]

Chris & Ellie Series: Episode 9.5

With Tumblr holding my original writing blog @beccaheartschrisevans captive (aka flagged as explicit), I have made a secondary writing blog and may end up closing the other all together. In the meantime, I am reposting all of my stories on my new blog.

Pairing: Chris Evans x Ellie Spencer (OFC)

Rating: PG

Warnings: n/a

Episode Summary: This episode takes place in October 2013. It features Ellie going out with her friends.

Disclaimer: This work of fiction is not to be reposted, used or translated without my permission.

The Chris and Ellie series is primarily chronological.  It begins with a flash forward to 2016 and has a few other scenes in the future.  However, the majority of their story is told in chronological order starting in 2013 and going through 2017. Each episode starts with a date to help you place it within the story.

The Chris & Ellie Series Masterlist | Chris & Ellie Masterlist

Episode 9

Episode 9.5: Girls' Night

October 4, 2013

Ellie laughed along with her friends as they sat around a table at their favorite restaurant waiting for their meals to arrive. They'd each gotten an exotic, fruity drink to celebrate the fact that Ellie had been in LA for a year.

To Ellie's immediate right was her cousin, Phoenix Laraby. While they were only related via Phoenix's dad's marriage to Ellie's aunt and they'd spent much of their early teen years not getting along, they'd grown a lot closer since Ellie had moved to California. Phoenix was married to a dashing fellow named Kurt and they had an adorable one year old son that Ellie couldn't get enough of.

Next to Phoenix was Marlene Sofer, the manager from the coffee shop that Ellie had worked at before she'd taken the job with Chris. Marlene was the newest addition to their little group, having joined them on their first outing after Ellie had quit the coffee shop. Marlene was a couple years older than the others, but she, like Ellie, had moved to LA dreaming of a different career only to find herself lost in the shuffle.

Kira Pace sat on Marlene's other side and she had been Phoenix's best friend since childhood. She had been a bit standoffish with Ellie at first, afraid that Ellie was going to steal Phoenix away, but after a heart to heart, she and Ellie had realized they had a lot in common and they'd been friends ever seen.

Paige Anderson sat between Ellie and Kira and she was the person responsible for introducing Ellie to Veronica Sampson, the owner of the bookstore Ellie worked at. Paige had grown up with Veronica's niece and had worked at the bookstore while she'd been going to college. She and Ellie had met at the coffee shop and had become friends after talking about books and the literary business as Paige was an aspiring writer.

"Alright," Phoenix said, shaking back her blonde hair as she picked up her drink. "We're here tonight to celebrate the fact that my cousin Ellie has officially been a Californian for a year! So here's to the first and hopefully many to come!"

"Here, here!" the others agreed as they clanked their funky shaped glasses then took sips of their drink.

As Ellie put her drink down, she caught sight of someone walking towards their table. It took her a moment, but she finally recognized the woman as Kady Locke.

"Ellie!" Kady greeted with a smile. "I saw you when we came in and I wanted to say hi."

Ellie stood up to give her a hug and then quickly introduced Kady to her friends, introducing her as a friend of Chris's.

"Speaking of Chris, Ray and I want to have dinner with you two soon," Kady said. "We're both jealous that the others got to spend so much time with you at the wedding! Especially after we got to see you and Chris in action last month at that party."

"You'll have to check with Chris," Ellie replied. "I know he is going back east at the end of the month."

"I'll definitely have Ray call him then," Kady said with a smile as the waitress arrived with their food. "I'll let you eat. It was really good seeing you again. Give Chris our love." She and Ellie hugged once more before Kady walked away.

Ellie took her seat again and found four sets of eyes staring. "What?" she asked.

"Who did you say that was again?" her cousin asked with a knowing smile.

"She's married to one of Chris's former roommates," Ellie replied. "I went to her wedding with Chris."

Her friends exchanged looks and smirks. "What?" she asked again.

"She made it seem like you and Chris were more than just friends," Paige stated.

"We're just friends," Ellie insisted. "Ask Phoenix, she met him tonight."

"I did meet him tonight," Phoenix nodded. "And he is even more good looking in person." She let out a whoosh of breath. "That said, I can't deny that there was some electricity between the two of you, El."

"He was mad at me for not calling him when my car broke down after work," Ellie stated. "That wasn't electricity, it was anger." She'd gotten home late from work because the alternator in her car had gone out. She'd had the car towed to a shop then had gotten an Uber car to bring her home. Chris had read her the riot act about not calling him when she'd gotten home, which meant that she hadn't been ready when Phoenix had arrived to give her a ride.

"So why do his friends think you're together?" Kira asked.

"One of them thought she walked in on us kissing at his party last month," Ellie replied. "When in reality he was getting a piece of fuzz out of my hair."

"So what you're saying is that you have no feelings what so ever for Chris?" Marlene asked.

Ellie glared at Marlene as she tried to come up with an answer, but she was drawing a blank. She valued her friends too much to lie to them and say she had no feelings for Chris, not to mention Phoenix would call her on the lie. In the six months they'd known each other, Chris had quickly become one of her best friends. Sure he was good looking, but he was her boss. She couldn't afford to feel more for him.

Her phone alerted her to a text message and she stalled in answering the question to check it. She smiled when she saw it was from Chris.

Our boys are up 5 to 2 after the fourth.

She'd been torn when the Red Sox's first postseason game had been scheduled for tonight. Chris had promised to keep her updated on the game, but she'd worried that his anger with her earlier would make him change his mind.

"Who's the text from, Ellie?" Kira asked with a smirk.

"Shut up," Ellie replied, rolling her eyes. "Ok. Fine. I like him." The ease of that admission caught her off guard.

"I knew it!" Phoenix laughed. "So what are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing!" Ellie exclaimed. "He's my boss. Unless you want me to come live on your sofa, Chris and I can't be anything more than employer and employee."

"I thought his mom was the one that paid you," Paige stated.

"Exactly! That makes it even more complicated," Ellie sighed she picked up her fork and poked at her dinner. "He's just a really awesome guy. He gets me. He's just as crazy as I am about football." She shrugged. "But I'm not his type of girl -"

"I've seen pictures of the girls he's dated in the past," Phoenix cut her off. "You're ten times better than all of them."

"And that's why you're my favorite cousin," Ellie laughed. "But seriously. Chris and I, we're just meant to be friends. Nothing more."

"For the record, I think you're selling yourself short," Paige said, squeezing Ellie's hand. "And if Chris is really the guy that you've told us about, the one that the public doesn't see, he knows your worth."

Episode 10

Want to find me off tumblr? I’m @beccatheycallme on twitter. I also post my stories on AO3.

My tag list is always open, just let me know if you’d like to be added!

[hazza-bearstyles-blog]

Can you do a harry centered one where harry goes missing (like with witness protection) and it's right after his solo tour and the other boys hear and freak out. He comes back months later and he's been hurt and the boys refuse to leavve his side and they all get together. Make it long and angst/fluff filled plz!

                          Find My Way Back To You

A/N: So I made this up about the WPP as I went. And the two songs that Harry ‘writes’ are actually ‘Skin’ by Rag ‘n’ Bone Man and ‘I Found’ by Amber Run and they do not belong to me.

Word Count: 7K+

Warning(s): Abuse; Harry whump; attempted kidnapping; attempted murder

Disclaimer: I do not own ‘Skin’ by Rag ‘n’ Bone Man and ‘I Found’ by Amber Run.

All day, Harry had a very strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. He woke up feeling anxious and he wasn’t sure that it was such a good idea to leave the flat today. But he had to. He had things to do. 

“C’mon, Piper,” Harry called out to the Shiba Inu dog sleeping beside him. “It’s time to get up.”

Piper yawned and hopped off the bed, looking at her owner excitedly. Harry smiled down at his baby girl and scratched behind her ears. He stood up and opened the bedroom door. Piper ran ahead of Harry and over to the door, begging to be let out. Harry chuckled as he got the dog’s leash and attached it to her collar. After putting on a jacket and shoes, he opened the door letting in the crisp Californian morning air. 

“Alright, let’s go.”

They walked out the door and took a walk around the block so Piper could relieve herself. After about 30 minutes, the pair made their way back home. Harry went about making himself and Piper breakfast. Once he was done, he went to his room to change for the day and let Jeff know that he was on his way to the recording studio.

It was as Harry was saying goodbye to Piper and walking out of the house that he felt he was being watched. He looked over his shoulder as he locked his door but there was nothing and no one there. Shrugging, Harry turned to head to his car. The whole time he drove to the studio, Harry still got the feeling that someone was watching him. It was a relief when he finally reached his destination and got inside. 

“Hey, Harry!” Serena the receptionist at the desk greeted him.

Harry grinned and high-fived her as he walked past. “Jeff here yet?”

“Not yet, dear. He should be in soon though.”

“OK, I’m going to head back and start working on this new song,” Harry said as he made his way into the back of the studio. 

The curly-haired man sat down at the piano once he was inside and started playing. This new song that he was planning out was going to be a love ballad. It was a song that was really close to his heart because when he thought about the ones he wanted to share it with, his heart ached when he remembered that he couldn’t. At least not in the way he wanted. Harry sighed as his mind drifted to the four men that he was hopelessly in love with. Yes. Four. Harry Edward Styles was in love with none other than his former bandmates, Niall, Zayn, Liam, and Louis.  

Harry had longed for them for years but it’s not like anything would ever come from it. Zayn hated him. Hadn’t talked to him since he left the band. He had grown even closer with Louis, Liam and, Niall after Zayn had left, but once 1D broke up, they all seemed to drift apart. They all had different lives now. And don’t get him wrong. Harry was super glad that they had all escaped from Modest Management and that they all seemed to be thriving in their own ways but… it still hurt to not be as close as they used to be. Writing this song helped let out his emotions though. 

‘And I found love where it wasn’t supposed to be. Right in front of me. Talk some sense to me…’

Harry spent the rest of the morning pouring his heart and soul into his song. He and Jeff exchanged a few ideas when the older man came in and they spent the day writing out the music for the song. By the time either man realized what time it was, it was well into the afternoon. Harry looked at his watch and got up. 

“You want to grab dinner, mate?” Jeff asked as he got ready to leave.

“No thanks. I’m going to go let Piper out and take her for a walk and then I think I am going to head back here and work some more. I have more ideas to write down.”

Jeff smiled at his friend and rested a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t work too hard, Curly.” 

With a promise to his friend that he wouldn’t, Harry was out the door and on his way home. 

~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~-

The uneasy feeling didn’t return until Harry and Piper were making their way into the empty studio after he dinner. The curly-haired-man looked around in apprehension before he entered the studio again. Once he and Piper were inside, he felt like he was not alone but he pushed the feeling aside. He had work to do. 

Heading to the back room to write some more Harry didn’t notice that he wasn’t alone in the building. It wasn’t until a hand landed on his shoulder. Crying out in surprise, Harry jerked around and came face to face with someone he hadn’t seen in a couple of weeks. Not since he got the restraining order. 

“Jack. What are you doing here?” Harry asked shakily.

Right away, Piper started to growl at the man. She stepped protectively in front of her owner, tail raised in warning to the stranger.

Jack took a step toward Harry. “You’ve been ignoring my calls. Why?”

“You know why. Now leave before I call the police on you.” Harry said sternly. 

Jack had been one of the interns for the record label for 6 months before they had found out that he had been stalking Harry for at least a year. They had fired him and upped Harry’s security. Things had seemed fine until Jack had shown up in front of Harry’s house. Luckily, Jeff and Mitch had been with him and they had called the police on Jack. After that, Harry had gotten a restraining order against the intern and Jack had seemed to drop off the face of the earth. Until now. 

And Jack looked horrible. His eyes were red and his hair greasy. He had sores all over his face and his clothes looked like they hadn’t been washed. “I need your help, Harry. I’ve gotten into some trouble.”

Harry shook his head and pointed at the door. “No Jack. I am not doing anything for you. Get out.”

Jack’s dark eyes narrowed dangerously. “Well then. I see how it is. You have a bit of success and now you’re above everybody else right?”

Harry took a deep breath. “I don’t owe you anything.” 

That wasn’t what Jack wanted to hear. He angrily turned around and punched the wall. “Fine, Styles. Don’t help. But know that this was your last chance. First, you get me fired and then you filed a restraining order against me? Now, this?” He took a step towards Harry but stopped when Piper began growling again. “I thought we had something special.” 

“We don’t and we never did.” Harry snapped back. “That was all in your head. And I don’t, nor have I ever, owe you anything. Now get out before I call the police.”

“You’ll regret this, Harry.” And with that, Jack slammed the door.

~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~-

Harry couldn’t concentrate the rest of the night. He kept seeing Jack’s face and hearing his threats. Piper stayed by him, growling every time she heard a sound and it frayed Harry’s nerves even more. It was midnight when Harry decided to finally call it a night. As Harry was walking out of the building, he heard voices coming from near where he parked the car. 

“You promised me, Jack. Where’s my money? I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

“I promise I’ll have it. Soon! I just need more time, Carl.”

“That wasn’t the deal kid. You’re really leaving me no choice here.”

By this time, Harry had reached the parking lot be he was hesitant to go any further. He could see the source of the two voices and saw that one of them was Jack. He really didn’t want to have another conversation with the other man and he definitely didn’t want to get into the middle of what was going down. He debated turning back towards the studio and calling an Uber to come pick him up. He would have done that if something hadn’t flown in front of them and spooked Piper, causing her to start barking. 

Jack turned towards Harry as the other man, Carl, took out a gun and shot him point blank. Harry’s hands covered his mouth in shock and he fell back in a hurry to get out of sight. He desperately tried to get Piper to calm down. 

“Hey, kid. I hope you’re not trying to run. Because it’s no use.”

Harry was shaking in fear. Piper growled at the other man and stood in front of Harry protectively. “No Piper. Get back, girl. 

Harry looked up and saw the man standing five feet in front of him, his gun pointing right at him. Harry wasn’t sure what would have happened next if another man hadn’t come running out of the nearby alleyway, gun drawn and yelling for Carl to freeze. 

Carl turned his gun towards the other man and shot at him but missed. The newcomer, in turn, shot at Carl and got him. Harry wasn’t sure if it was adrenaline or what but he suddenly remembered how to get up and run. So he did, dragging Piper with him. 

“Come on, Piper. Let’s go, girl.” He made it to his car and slammed the door shut. He tore out of the parking lot, driving away. His hands were shaking as he finally pulled to a stop, 10 minutes later. Looking around, he realized that he had pulled up in front of a police station. Taking that as a sign, Harry and Piper got out of the car and walked into the station. 

“Can I help you, young man?” Asked the concerned elderly lady at the front desk. 

“I… I need to report a… a… murder…” As Harry uttered the words, he felt himself getting sick. He bent over and threw up all over the floor. 

~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~-

“OK, kid. Just a little longer.” The detective told him kindly. “Do any of these men look familiar?”

Harry looked down at the pictures that Detective Gellar was showing him. It only took him 30 seconds to make an ID. “Him. I think Jack said his name was Carl.”

Detective Gellar got a worried look on his face as he recognized the man but he quickly got rid of it. “Carl Meyers.”

“Who is he?” Harry asked. 

“He’s the head of a drug ring that we’ve been trying to arrest for the past year now. He’s extremely dangerous.”

Harry began shaking again the more he heard about Carl Meyers. “Should… should I get more security? What should I do?” 

Detective Gellar shook his head. “Not quite.” He got up. “Wait here for a moment. I’ll be right back.”

Harry felt himself grow more and more apprehensive as the detective got up and left. What was going to happen? He looked over at Piper who was sleeping in the corner. At least they were safe. Right? He looked up as the door opened once more letting in Detective Gellar and a new face. 

“Harry Styles?”

Harry’s mouth dropped open in shock. It was the man that shot Carl in the parking lot. What was he doing here?

As if reading his mind, the man introduced himself. “Agent James Harrison. I’ve been working on the Carl Meyers case for a while now. We need to talk.”

Harry slowly nodded.

“Carl Meyers and his men are still out there and until we catch them, it isn’t safe for you to return home. We need to hide you.”

~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~-   

Harry stared at himself in the mirror, tears in his eyes. He had just learned that his time in Witness Protection would be spent in isolation with only his contact coming to check on him every few days.

“C’mon, Daniel. Don’t just stand there forever. We need to get this hair shaved so it’ll be easier to hide you.”

Harry looked at Harrison in confusion. “Daniel?”

The agent rolled his eyes at the kid. “You. You’re Daniel. Remember? We can’t go by your old name anymore.”

Harry looked away again. “Right. Daniel.” He whispered. He looked at the razor that Harrison was holding. “Let’s get this over with.”

Harry sat down and let the older man run the razor through his curls. “You know it’s not enough just to shave my head.”

Harrison grunted in annoyance as he finished. “I know. Your damn face is everywhere. That’s why you’re being sent to the middle of nowhere, kid. Where no one can find you until we resolve this.”

Harry closed his eyes tightly as the tears threatening to fall again. He didn’t want to cry in front of Agent Harrison however so he took a deep breath and steeled his nerves. 

“So, northern Alberta?” Harry asked as he stood up.

“Yes. You leave in just a couple of hours.” Harrison sat the razor down. He sat down across from Harry and looked at him. “They said you could bring the mutt with you.”

Harry looked at him surprised. “Piper? I can bring her?” 

“Yes. There’s no harm in it. Can’t leave you out there completely friendless can we?”

Harry felt a burning behind his eyes again as he nodded. “Thank you.”

Harrison only looked at the kid out of the corner of his eye. “Hmmm. Don’t mention it, kid. Now let’s go over everything again.”

~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- 

It was a couple days later that Louis was going about his morning routine like normal. He happened to be scrolling through his news feed when a headline jumped out at him. 

‘Where Is Harry Styles?’

Louis narrowed his eyes in curiosity as he clicked on the article. He wished he hadn’t. Jeff, Harry’s manager had not seen the young singer since a couple of nights ago when the police were at Harry’s house due to a break in. Harry hadn’t shown up to the recording studio the next day. And when Jeff had gone to Harry’s flat in LA, he hadn’t received an answer and the place had been ransacked. After numerous calls to Harry’s mum and sister and anybody else that might have seen or hear from him, Harry was declared missing. 

Louis wanted to throw up. Harry was missing. No one had seen him. His place was destroyed. Where was he? Where was Harry? Was he hurt? Louis hoped he wasn’t hurt. Louis sat there in shock for a few more minutes before he snapped out of it. He grabbed his phone and made a call.

A shaky voice answered. “L-Louis?”

“Anne, I just heard,” Louis responded as he began pacing back and forth.

A sob escaped the woman’s mouth. “My baby is missing, Louis. He’s missing.”

Louis spent the rest of the morning on the phone trying to soothe Anne.

~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- 

When Liam heard, he was spending his morning with Bear. He was feeding the baby when a knock came frantically on the door. Liam walked over to answer it and Cher walked in. 

“Are you OK?” She asked in concern as she hugged him.

Liam looked at the woman in confusion. “What are you talking about? Cher, what’s going on?”

Cher looked at Liam in shock. “You haven’t heard?”

Liam shook his head in bewilderment. “No. What is it?” He was becoming more and more nervous by the second. 

“Harry’s missing. It’s all over the news. No one has seen him in two days and his place in LA was torn apart.”

Liam felt his heart stop at those words. Harry? Missing? Maybe he hadn’t heard right?

“I’m sorry… what?” He asked his ex. 

Cher sighed and laid a hand on his shoulder. “It’s true. His mother and sister haven’t heard from him and his manager has been tearing the city apart looking with the police.”

Liam wanted to drop everything and fly out to LA right now and help look for his missing friend. He needed to be there. It was a well-known fact amongst the members of 1D that Liam was the most protective of Harry. Even if they had grown apart, that fact had not changed. Now Harry was missing. 

But how could Liam leave Bear? It was his week with him. Liam looked at Cher and she seemed to read his mind. 

“Bear can stay with my mother. Don’t worry. You do what you need to. We understand.”

Liam nodded gratefully and turned to kiss his son’s forehead. “I love you, cub. You be good for grandma and I’ll be back soon. And so will Uncle Hazzy.” 

Liam booked the next flight to California.

~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~-

Niall heard through some paps that cornered him as he was walking out of his home in LA. 

“Niall? Do you have anything to say about the recent disappearance of Harry Styles?”

Niall paused at that and turned to look at the reporter who had spoken. What?

“Niall! Over here! Has Harry tried to contact you lately? Do you have any idea where he might be?”

Niall looked at the paps, confused. What were they going on about?

One of the camera women saw his confused look and lowered her camera, looking at the Irish man in pity. “You didn’t know, did you? Harry Styles has been missing for two days now but he was officially announced missing today.”

Niall’s breath caught in his throat. What? He quickly took out his phone to call Harry. Harry couldn’t be missing. He couldn’t. 

“Hey! It’s Harry! I’m out living my life! Leave it at the beep!”

Niall’s heart began to beat rapidly when all he got was voicemail. He hung up and tried texting his curly-haired friend. 

To Hazza BearHarry!? Where are you? Please tell me that you’re OK!

Niall knew this would be in vain though. He was so immersed in trying to figure out a way to contact Harry, that he didn’t notice when one of the reporters had walked up to him. He did notice when they got in his face and began shouting more questions at him. 

Niall quickly shoved the reporter aside and ran back to his house, slamming the door shut. He slid down the wall and stared at his phone, praying that his phone would light up and it would be a response from Harry. The more that the Irish man stared though, the more dismal that hope became. How could this be happening? Harry couldn’t really be missing. Could he? 

Niall was snapped out of his thoughts when his phone lit up. He almost half expected it to be Harry calling to say that it was all just a joke. That he was really fine and there was no need to worry. That of course was too much to hope for. Niall was surprised when he looked at his phone and saw who it was. He quickly answered.

“Zayn?” He asked, voice cracking. 

“So you’ve heard?”

Niall swallowed thickly and whispered a confirmation. “He’s missing, Zayn. How can he be missing? What… what happened?”

“I don’t know, Nialler…” Zayn replied. “I don’t know but I swear we’ll find him.” A long silence. “I’m coming to LA. I booked the next flight out. And if I know Louis and Liam, they’ll be there soon too. I have to go pack. Will you be alright?”

Niall shook his head as if Zayn could see him. “I’ll be OK when we find him and he’s safe.”

“I understand. I’ll be there soon.”

~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~-

When Zayn had heard the news, the only thing he could do was stare at his phone in shock. Harry was missing? He had been stalked and possibly kidnapped? How could this be happening?

Zayn had been in the middle of recording his new single when he had decided to take a break. Checking his phone, he noticed that he had a ton of missed alerts and messages from his manager. Confused, Zayn checked the messages from Ryan first. 

From Ryan BaileyHave you seen the news?

From Ryan BaileyZayn? Seriously! It’s all over the news!

From Ryan BaileyAre you OK? Call me! Let me know that you’re alright.

Zayn shook his head in further confusion as he scrolled through all his messages. There was also one message from Safaa. 

From Baby SafaaZayn! Did you hear? Harry’s missing! Are you OK? Call me or mom!

And Zayn had to read the message ten more times before the words sunk in. Harry was missing. What the hell. Zayn quickly clicked on the first news article that he could find and what he read sickened him. Some asshole had been stalking Harry and he had been reportedly seen near Harry’s recording studio. There had been a disturbance later that night at Harry’s house but they hadn’t caught the guy. The last people to see Harry alive were the police there that night. 

Zayn’s blood ran cold at that sentence. ‘The last people to see Harry Styles alive…’ Was Harry…? No! He couldn’t think like that. Harry was alive. He had to be. Because he swore if someone had hurt Harry… Zayn sat down to himself when he felt the familiar urge to protect Harry arise. Where had that come from? Because he and Harry didn’t talk anymore. Hadn’t talked in years now. Zayn shook his head again. That wasn’t important. Whatever had happened between Zayn and the other boys was not important at the moment and it could wait until Harry was found safe. The Bradford man immediately booked the next flight to LA and then called the one person he knew would pick up. 

“Zayn?” A choked voice came through.

Zayn sighed. “So you’ve heard?”

~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~-

Harry looked around his new home with sad eyes. This is where he would be spending the next few months. Maybe more. There was already furniture set up in the tiny house but it was all covered in sheets and dust. Almost like it hadn’t been used in years. Harry guessed that that was probably true. The air smelt cold and stale and Harry shivered as he looked around the house.

He looked down as Piper nosed his hand. Smiling down at the dog he leaned down and kissed her forehead. 

“This is our home for a while, girl. What do you think?”

Piper looked around and started sniffing at everything. The dog sneezed as she disrupted the dust on the couch. She turned to look at her owner, bewildered. Harry chuckled softly as he motioned for her to come back to him. He gave her a quick hug before letting her go and setting his duffel bag down on the couch. 

“OK, you two. This is it for the next few months,” Harrison said as he walked into the living room carrying a few boxes of food for Piper and Harry. “It’s not much I know but it will do.”

Harry gave the agent a small smile. “No, it’s good. Thank you.” 

Harrison sat down the boxes of food in the small kitchen and began to put things away. Harry went over and began to help him. It was awkwardly silent for a few moments before the older man decided to break the silence.

“You know, if I remember correctly, there is a keyboard or something around here somewhere. You know… if you wanted to play anything.”

Harry looked at him and nodded. “OK. Thank you.” 

The gruff man nodded and began to walk around the house making sure everything was set up properly. Harry turned back to the kitchen and decided to make some dinner for them. After about an hour, Harry was setting two plates of spaghetti on the table and a bowl of kibble in front of Piper. The dog barked happily and began to dig in hungrily. 

“Thanks.” Harrison nodded as he started to eat. “This is really good, pop star. Ever consider becoming a chef as opposed to a singer?”

Harry nodded. “I did. I used to work in a bakery but there’s something about music that just… it speaks to me and I can’t imagine my life without it.”

Harrison ‘hmmed’ but continued to eat. As soon as he was done, he got up and got ready to leave. “I should get going, kid. I have to let HQ know that you’re safe and settled. I’ll be back in a little over a week to check on you.”

Harry nodded quietly but didn’t say anything. As soon as the door shut, it was like a switch was flipped. Harry’s eyes began to sting and, after days of trying to keep the tears at bay, he could no longer hold them in. The curly-haired man buried his face in his hands and began to sob. 

He looked up when he felt a paw on his leg and whimpering. He saw Piper staring up at him with sad brown eyes and ears drooping. Harry got up from the table and made his way over to the couch and motioned for Piper to follow him. As soon as he sat down, the Shiba Inu dog jumped up onto the couch and laid her head onto her owner’s lap, trying to comfort him. Harry only bent his head down and buried his face into the dog’s neck, crying his heart out. This was going to be a long few months. 

~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~-

Two Weeks Later

Two weeks. Two weeks it had been since Harry had been reported missing. Two weeks since the world had come crashing down around Louis, Liam, Niall, and Zayn. It had been a long and grueling couple of weeks. Zayn and Louis had fought almost every moment upsetting Niall. Liam had tried to get them both to calm down and focus on finding Harry to no avail. 

“What are you even doing here, Malik?” Louis had asked. “You haven’t even talked to us in years. “So why?”

“Because Harry is my friend too and I am just as worried as you guys are.”

“That’s rich.” Louis scoffed. “You cut off all ties with us. Especially with him. Do you realize how much you hurt him?”

“You don’t think I know that!?” Zayn shouted back in anger. “I think about it and regret it every day. I wish I could take back what I said so much.”

“Then why did you bloody say it to begin with? I thought we were friends! I thought we were all a team!”

“Guys…” Niall tried cutting in but he was ignored. He ran a hand through his hair nervously. Liam rested a hand on his shoulder comfortingly. 

“You want to talk about friendship? If we were such great friends, how come none of you noticed how bad the anxiety had gotten? How come you didn’t notice that I wasn’t happy anymore? Why were you all so damn busy with your own lives that you didn’t notice that I had stopped eating?”

Louis’ mouth snapped shut when he heard all that. He tried to reply but he couldn’t think of anything to say. Luckily, Liam and Niall had no such problem.

Niall got up looking at Zayn with concern. “You what? Zayn… I…”

“I thought you guys just didn’t care anymore so I decided that I didn’t care anymore either…” Zayn whispered as he sat down with his head in his hands. 

“Zayn…” Liam said as he sat down next to the older man. “We always cared. And we still do care. I am so sorry that you felt that way.” Liam wrapped an arm around Zayn and pulled him into a hug.

Louis sighed and knelt in front of the Bradford man. “Zayn… I… I mean… I just…”

Zayn gave Louis a small smile. “It’s OK. I know. I’m sorry too.” The smile fell off his face and he buried his face in his hands. “I wish it didn’t take Harry disappearing for us to talk again. I wish he were here right now.”

Niall rubbed his eyes and nodded in agreement. “I wish he was here too.”

The four sat there, thinking about their youngest friend and how much they each wanted him back in their arms. They were brought out of their thoughts when Jeff walked into the room with Anne and Gemma. 

“Boys, it’s time for the interview. Are you all ready?” 

Louis, Liam, Zayn, and Niall looked at each other and nodded. They all got up and headed to the interview for finding Harry. With this, they hoped that some helpful tip would come in and that they would be able to find the youngest in no time at all.

That had been two weeks ago. Since then, they had gotten one unhelpful tip after the other. They had been constantly harassed by reporters and, to make things worse, there was no sign of Harry anywhere. They couldn’t even find Piper, Harry’s beloved dog. 

They had the police searching around the clock for Harry but they never found anything. No paper trails. No phone calls. Nothing to track him by. No ransom notes had been sent in. No threats. Nothing. It was like Harry had disappeared right off the face of the earth and it was beginning to wear on everybody. The police had even tried interviewing Jack, the guy who had been stalking Harry for months, but he had shown up dead.

Where was Harry? Was he OK? Was he hurt? The boys desperately wanted to know but the more time passed, the less chance of finding the Cheshire lad seemed to arise.

~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~-

Harry sat and watched the interviews and everything that his friends and family were going through. Tears stung his eyes, not for the first time since this whole ordeal began. Piper, bless her heart had spent the entire time trying to make Harry feel better. She cuddled up to Harry when he cried, she played around trying to distract him from everything and she protected him every time they went out for a walk making sure everyone and everything knew that he was hers. 

Harry had found the keyboard that Harrison had mentioned and he began playing on it, coming up with more songs every day. It seemed that, aside from taking Piper for walks, there was nothing else to do. Harry needed music now more than ever. There was one song that he had grown particularly close to called ‘Skin’.

‘Seconds from my heart, a bullet from the dark. Helpless, I surrender. Shackled by your love holding me like this, with poison on your lips. Only when it’s over, the silence hits so hard’. Cause it was almost love, it was almost love it was almost love, it was almost love. When I heard that sound when the walls came down, I was thinking about you; about you. When my skin grows old, when my breath runs cold, I’ll be thinking about you; about you…’

Harry had written this when he saw the guys on TV begging for him to come home safely. He wished he could be with them right now. It hurt seeing them hurt. It hurt seeing his mom and Gemma hurting. He just wished that none of this had ever happened. But this was the situation he was in. In order to keep his loved ones safe, he had to do this. Harry laid down with his head on Piper’s belly and fell into a restful sleep.

~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~-

It was a few months later, during one of Harrison’s visits when everything came to a head. Harrison received a call two hours into his visit with Harry.

“Harrison. What? Are you sure?”

Harry looked up at the agent in curiosity. “What’s going on?”

“I’ll have to ask him what he wants. I am not putting his life in any unnecessary danger.” He hung up the phone.

Harry looked at him expectantly.

“They caught Meyers and his men. And you’re the only living eyewitness left. They want you to testify.”

~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~-

One Week Later

“Kid, are you sure you want to do this?” Harrison asked as he rested a hand on Harry’s shoulder. 

Harry nervously ran a hand through his curly locks that had slowly begun to grow back. “No… but I do know that it is something that I have to do.” He looked up at the agent that had protected him for the past few months. “If I don’t then this monster is let go and then what? I live in fear the rest of my life? Or worse yet. Let him threaten my family?”

Harrison gave Harry a barely-there smile. “You’re a good kid. Brave too. I know men twice your age who would just cower away and only think of themselves.” 

Harry smiled back up at the agent but it disappeared when he saw the bailiff gesturing for him to come forward. Harry could hear the district attorney from inside the courtroom.

“We call Harry Styles to the stand.”

Harry paled at that. “Here we go…” he whispered.

~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~-

Harry was shaking by the time that he was done with his testimony. Carl Meyers had been sneering at him the entire time and Harry felt like he was going to throw up. He had to do this though. Had to. He couldn’t back down and let this bastard win. 

It happened as Harry was stepping off the stand. He saw one of the court officers reach into his belt and draw a gun aiming directly for Harry. Harry ducked down as he heard someone yell his name. He cried out as he felt something hit his shoulder. 

“Harry!” 

Harry fell to the ground and cried out again as he hit his injured shoulder. The next thing he knew Harrison was next to him, putting pressure on his wound. 

“Hey now. Stay with me, kid.”

But Harry found himself losing the battle to stay conscious

“I need a medic over here. I need one now!”

The last thing Harry remembered was Harrison calling out his name. 

~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~-

Harry groaned in pain as he awoke, noticing that he was in the hospital. “Wh-what…happened?”

“You were shot in court.” Came a voice from right beside him. 

Harry turned to the side and saw his mom looking at him. His mom that he hadn’t seen in months. His mom that he had longed to hug. Tears began to fill his eyes.

“Mommy?” He asked, voice cracking.

“Oh, my baby.” Anne leaned forward and gathered Harry into her arms. “Oh, baby. It’s going to be alright. You’re safe now.”

“I was so scared mommy. I just wanted you and the boys the entire time to be there.” Harry sobbed as Anne held him. 

“I know, love. But you made it through and you’re safe now. You’re safe.”

It took a while for Harry to calm down but he did eventually. Once he stopped he laid in his mom’s arms not wanting to do much else. Eventually, he looked over shoulder and saw a sight that melted his heart. Liam, Louis, Zayn, and Niall were all sprawled out on the couches in the room and cuddled together. Anne turned to see what her son was looking at an chuckled. 

“They haven’t left your side since they got here. That was two days ago.”

Harry looked at his mom surprised. “I was out for two days?”

Anne smiled sadly at Harry. “Yes, love. You lost quite a bit of blood. We were all worried about you for a while there. It was lucky that Agent Harrison was there to keep pressure on the wound.”

Harry looked back at his mom at the mention of Harrison. “Is he OK? He didn’t get hurt, did he?”

Anne shook her head. “No, baby. He wasn’t.” 

Harry sighed in relief when he heard that. Looking back over at the boys he smiled. “I missed you guys. I missed them.”

Anne smiled at her son. “They missed you too. It hurt them to not know if you were alright. They were so relieved to hear that you had reappeared. I think it’s safe to say that they feel the same way about you as you do them.”

Harry looked at his mom in shock. “Wh…what?”

“Oh, Harry, love, I’ve known for a while now. I know that you love all of them more than just friends. And I can tell they feel the same way.”

“You… you don’t hate me?” Harry whispered, still looking at his mom in shock.

“Oh, Harry.” Anne cupped his chin in her hand. “I could never ever hate you. No matter what. And I only want you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

Harry’s eyes began to water again. “I love you, mum.”

Anne hugged Harry close. “I love you too, baby.”

~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~- ~-

It was a few more days before Harry was officially released from the hospital and Louis, Liam, Zayn, and Niall had yet to leave his side. They stuck around for everything. Niall even found a way to sneak Piper in and out of the hospital so the dog could see her owner. Harry didn’t know if it was the fact that he hadn’t seen these boys in months or the fact that they were catering to everything he needed, but he felt himself falling more and more in love with them. 

A couple of weeks later and the five boys had been living at Harry’s flat in LA. Harry had decided to take a couple of months off to spend with family and friends. Harry enjoyed having his old bandmates around and it was like old times. Zayn and Harry sat down and talked about what had gone down between Zayn and the band and now their friendship was stronger than ever.  

One day, Harry was sitting at the piano in his house and singing the song he wrote all those months ago. Niall was the only one home at the moment and he was busy on a phone call with his manager so Harry chose to let everything go while he played. His feelings for the boys had been growing more and more and he was feeling miserable knowing that it was never going to happen. 

‘I’ll use you as a warning sign, that if you talk enough sense then you’ll lose your mind. And I’ll use you as a focal point, so I don’t lose sight of what I want. And I’ve moved further than I thought I could, but I missed you more than I thought I would. And I’ll use you as a warning sign that if you talk enough sense then you’ll lose your mind… And I found love where it wasn’t supposed to be, right in front of me. Talk some sense to me…’

“That’s really beautiful. Who did you write it for?” 

Harry looked up in shock. He hadn’t heard Niall come in at all. The Irish man was smiling at Harry as he walked into the room. He sat next to Harry on the piano bench. 

“Uh… hi, Niall. I didn’t hear you come in…” Harry looked away trying to hide a blush. 

Niall smirked over at his friend. “I see that blush! There is someone isn’t there! Who is it?”

Harry looked at Niall in confusion for a quick minute. He wasn’t entirely sure but he thought he heard a slight edge to Niall’s voice. What was that?

“Harry?”

“Huh?”

“Are you OK?” Niall asked in concern. “You spaced out for a minute there.”

“Oh… oh yeah… I’m good!” Harry smiled at the older man. “I was just thinking about the reason for this song…”

Niall smirked at him again an looked down at the lyrics. “So who is she?”

Harry looked down as he felt the blush returning. Being this close to Niall was making his stomach do somersaults. Maybe he should tell him? After all, if this experience had taught him anything, it was that life was too short.

“Well… it… it isn’t a girl…” Harry stammered.

“Oh,” Niall said as he turned to look at Harry. “Who is it? Someone I know?”

Harry blushed even harder. “Well…”

“Oh, I knew it! It’s someone I know!” Niall bounced excitedly. “Who?”

“I… don’t know if I can tell you…” Harry mumbled as he closed his music notebook. 

Niall looked at him in concern. “Hazza… you can tell me anything. Is this because it’s a guy? Because I don’t care about that. The lads and I love you just the same.”

Harry sniffled as he looked at Niall. Was he really going to do this? “It’s just that… it’s not jus… one… The guy I mean.”

Niall’s eyebrows knitted together in confusion. More than one guy? Could he mean…? No. “More than one guy…? Well… Haz if they make you happy… Do you mind if I ask who they are?”

Harry closed his eyes and took a deep breath to gather his courage. “Iloveyouandthelads…” 

Niall blinked at him. “I’m sorry… I missed that…”

Harry’s anxiety was going into overdrive. “I… I love… you and… and… the others. I ha-have for a while now.”

Niall sat in shock when he heard that. Harry what? He loved them? He did? This… this was a dream. A dream come true. Niall couldn’t say how long he had wanted to kiss the younger man and take him in his arms. He had actually wanted to do that with all his former bandmates but he didn’t know that anyone else had felt the same. Niall was about to say something but Harry beat him to it. He had taken Niall’s silence the wrong way. 

“I… am so so sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. Oh, God. Please don’t hate me, Niall. Please. I couldn’t stand it if I lost you.” Harry’s breath was becoming more and more erratic. 

Niall reached over and brought him into a hug, holding him tightly. “I don’t hate you. Could never hate you, baby. Shhh…. calm down now, Haz. Try and match my breathing. I’ve got you. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Another body soon joined. “He’s right, Haz. We’re not going anywhere.” Zayn said as he held Harry from behind. “Just breathe with us. We’ve got you.”

“They’re absolutely right, love. We’re here for you.” Louis chimed in as he knelt in front of Harry.

“We always will be,” Liam said, sitting beside Louis. 

Harry just sat in their arms for well over an hour before he gathered enough courage to look up. “You... you guys don’t hate me? I would understand if you did...” He whispered the last part. 

He felt a hand cup his cheek and bring his face to look at Liam. “We could never, ever hate you, baby. We love you too much.”

“Haz...” Zayn breathed as he kissed the back of Harry’s head. “I think it’s safe to say that, we’re in love with you.”

Harry looked around in shock. He hadn’t been expecting that. He had hoped of course, but he hadn’t expected this to come true in his wildest dreams. Looking at his friends’ faces, he saw nothing but the truth. 

He felt a pair of lips gently brush across his. He looked up shyly at Niall as the Irish man smiled at him. 

“Does this mean we’re together now?” Harry asked looking down at his hands. 

Louis brought Harry’s hands to his lips and kissed his knuckles. “Yeah, Haz. We’re together. We’re boyfriends.”

“I love you guys,” Harry whispered. 

“We love you too, Haz. We love you too.

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A/N: I hope you guys liked it! Let me know what you think and as always, send in the prompts! I am so sorry it took so long but I feel sooo much better now! Love you all!! XxxOoo